Useful. The budget and subsequent announcements has made quite a bit of that obsolete already. So too, I suspect, has the intent behind last week's EU consultation on cross border 'harmony'. A right riveting read that is too. My days are spent wading through reams of guidance, proposals and regulations that are, in themselves, pretty insignificant, but collectively are painting a picture of great significance in how we as a society, achieve, grow, spend and pass on our wealth.
Lots to digest, but skimming through it, it seems that if you're on the cusp of getting out at aged 55 and on the highest pay band, and are sent to the Ukraine, then go down fighting rather than getting captured by the Russians - your 4 times death in service benefit is worth far more than your 30 years subsequently peeling spuds in a gulag. Just as measly and parsimonious is the part about children's benefits. Don't bother with sperm donation before you deploy - what on earth does the MoD expect - C Company the 14th Mess Tin and Bottle Washer Slight of Hand & Foot Regiment descending en masse on a sperm bank before deploying on Operation Certain Death?
Given the relative swathes allocated to payments and ill health determination, should you be worried or reassured? You decide. And don't dip your fingers into the tea swindle and expect a life of pensioned luxury, that one seems to have been squared off too. I didn't see anything about which 'national average earnings index' was intended for use (bit of a difference between that and
the 'Average Earnings Index') when determining accrual - expect more CPI/RPI skullduggery.
I may have missed something about the accrual re-evaluation rate as well. That lack of hewn out of granite etched in stone, Mercedez Benz from the 1970s sense of certainty and build quality, as well as the references to the scheme only having validity as long as the cost cap was observed, have always made this (in my eyes) to be a bit of a stop gap measure.
http://www.pprune.org/military-aircr...ml#post7335640
Post budget, a lot of this debate is like being a bald man fighting over a comb. A pension is no longer a whole of life product. Looking at the fine detail is one thing, it's like bringing the washing in when you see a black cloud, but not seeing the local river is about to burst its banks. I am sure that the Forces Pensions Society will continue to fight the fight superbly, but putting this pension change into the context of a dramatically unfolding regulatory and legislative landscape is another. The overarching premise is simple, it really is - the state wants to control not only how much money you have, but how you access it and how you spend it.
It wants you to have access to your pension funds because it has annuity companies and life companies in its back pocket because they will have no money, no clout and no influence and because it wants to be autocratic in how it controls the money supply. The audacity and the scale of the budget is still reverberating. This tweak almost, is a footnote to the bigger picture, a sop to what has already happened and an almost insignificant prelude to what changes are yet to come. Fund picking is now sometimes an almost metaphorical afterthought in the advisory process. You need the vision, the plan, the exit strategy and the op order - not identifying who is responsible for ordering the compo.
George Osborne amplified the other day that the nuclear option; transferring out of a final salary scheme, was going to be abolished. It's obvious that you'll grow benefits within this scheme which will be worth less and less and less, and you will be tied in to the (declining) benchmark. A young aspiring officer has the prospect of a new lower lifetime allowance (expect sub £1,000,000 pretty soon, especially if the Lib Dems hold the keys) being locked away in a scheme that continues to reduce in real worth.
And I feel myself wondering, for the first time, why would anyone want, in principle, much more than a reasonably noticeable proportion of their pension lifetime allowance locked away in something as restrictive as this particular pension scheme will continue to become - especially if the member anticipates growing wealth as a civvy in the new languid waters of a legislative pension jacuzzi which allows/encourages/induces dangerously almost otherwise unfettered access?
I shall read it with interest properly later, thanks.