Retirement is one of the most complex times of our life we will experience but strangely it one of the ones we have the most time to plan. We start work whilst in our younger years and retirement seems to be far in the future and so planning for it takes a back seat. We enjoy life and before we know it we are receiving long service awards, and reminiscing saying “when I was younger we could buy fish and chips and have change out of £5”.
Its important, what ever stage of life you are in, you take a step back and look at what provisions you have in place for retirement. Working here at Lancaster we have pension schemes that are supported by the employer and these vary depending on your role at the University. Your pension is specific to you and no two pensions will be the same and so this makes it seem complex, however, understanding the value of your pension and what benefits are associated with it is paramount.
To enable someone to give advice on financial matters they have to comply with strict legal controls. There are things you can do for yourself, however:
- You can find out how much state pension you could get can here.
- If you are on the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) you can then get a further forecast using the following link
Once you have registered and got onto the site you may have further questions. If it’s general advice, and not financial, then please contact our Pensions Rep – Kev Wallis (k.wallis@lancaster.ac.uk) – who will be able to help explain.
You may then decide you would like additional funds for retirement and would like to find out about Additional Voluntary Contributions AVC’s run by Prudential for LGPS.
Members who are on the USS pension scheme may also have many questions, if you forward them to Kev, we will endeavour to find the relevant people to speak to.
Plan for the future now, tomorrow quickly becomes the past!