Axial Flo, Background Noise
What you say about the Personal Forecasts now makes sense. They are clearly calculated on your current pay/representative pay levels but projected forward to the reckonable service you would have if retiring at 55 from that level. OK for a first order comparison between the two schemes, but ridiculously misleading as to your actual pension calculation at 55, even accepting that they can only be made at 2005 rates. I can see some scenarios where this would distort the true comparison between the schemes at that point. The moral is: proceed with great care and check by hand if you can. As we have just seen, even the calculator contains at least one serious bug, and there could be more yet.
Regards
Ginseng