I suspect part of the problem with nailing this stuff, is the rate of change of pension schemes in public sector.
I left the mob in 2003 on AFPS 75 and briefly (18 months) worked for the MOD. the civil service had just binned their existing scheme and replaced it with a three choice scheme, one of which was a stakeholder scheme (I believe these have now also been replaced?) Knowing I was only going be in the job a little while, I went for the stakeholder thing. What a snafu, that turned about to be. Apparently I was only one of seven people in the entire civil service who went down this road and it took forever to get it established.
I had the last laugh though...I paid in a total of £480 in 18 months and last year it coughed out £4K tax free and a slap up dinner for two every month from now to endex!
As others have said, RAF pension and aforementioned Civil Service thingy, completely separate and unaffected by each other. Shouldn't read too much into it though.
Last edited by The Old Fat One; 4th Feb 2013 at 21:41.