Originally Posted by
Background Noise
I'm pretty sure you are right. I do remember being told about contracting out, I think it was even mentioned on our pay statements, but I didn't really have much of a clue - or much interest.
This is where I could be smug and sanctimoneous because I made a conscious decision to joing the (final salary) pension that I'm still in, so clearly I was more grown up - but if truth be told I was just lucky. For the first 10 years after leaving Uni I worked for companies that had non-contributory* pensions, and then in 1990 I joined my current employer. I also came into a small legacy at the same time, and it required some formal accountancy stuff because it came in the form of a "trust" (don't get the wrong idea - my monthly income from this "trust fund" was enough to just about cover the cost of an hour's C182 rental every few weeks to remain current).
So I found myself forced to get iunvolved with some financial planning, and the advisor firmly told me that it was ESSENTIAL that I joined the pension scheme of my new employer ASAP, because I had a girlfriend an they have a habit of falling pregnant (an accurate prediction, as it transpired). So at that point I contracted out of SERPS and joined the pension scheme, something I would have deemed dangerously conventional and domesticated as well as too low a priority to spend time on when there were still aeroplanes to be flown and pubs to be drunk-dry. So I was just lucky. Every now and then the devil vomits in someone ELSE'S porridge bowl and overlooks mine!
Of course seven years later the prediction came true, and marriage withdrew the time & funding to maintain the PPL, but at least I know that my family will have the umbrella of a rather rare final salary pension. That was 20 years ago, and I'm still wondering what the heck happened to my life and how I became such a boringly conventional person...
PDR
* this is a misnomer - it just means that the pension membership was compulsory rather than optional