Originally Posted by
MechGov
If you are in a position to retire now with full benefits it might be worth considering the effect on your pension by however many years of no pay rise or below inflation pay rises you are likely to endure. At 55 your pension is index linked. I retired after the last bout of austerity at level 35 PAS and my pension was less than a mate who retired 5 years earlier at level 30.
It's a good point. The difference now is that you can keep accruing a AFPS15 pension until age 60, growing at 1/47th (2.1%) of each year's salary. A full AFPS75 pension is roughly 50% of salary, so for index-linking to keep pace you'd need CPI to be running 4.2% higher than the annual pay award. I guess it might be possible for a year or two but it would be surprising if such a situation could last much longer than that.