Will a full career kill you?
 

There was an interesting comment on the pensions thread that deserves attention on its own. There seems to be a lot of anacdotal evidence that those who serve 30-something years and then leave at 55 have a disturbing tendancy to drop down dead only a couple of years later (******s up the pension plans doesn't it).

Is this really the case? Any kind PMA inhabiters care to confirm or deny? And if it is true then why are suposedly healthy and fit individuals (truckies and shineys obviously excepted!!) dying so early?

Is it that we become so institutionalised that the shock of going out into the big wide world kills us? I remember a sqn WO telling me "Remember, when you walk out through the main gate for the last time, no-one gives a **** whether you turn left or right."

Perhaps we should all leave at the IPP!

Its very true!! Just look at the mortality rate of other services like the Fire and Police services, they drop like flies after the age of 55!!

Maybe thats why most of the officers ellect to commute the maximum ammount of their pensions into a lump sum they can blow before they all keel over!!

Think the official side blame the shift work!!

:ugh:

It might improve the pension situation if one does drop dead soon after retirement because few seem to have a big enuff pension to live well on nowadays.

I believe it is best to retire as soon as one has earned a service pension and then take a new job that also earns a reasonable pension. The current service pension does not include any element for flying pay and is woefully inadequate for those fliers accustomed to spending at their earnings rate. This is not understood by most people until they are too close to retirement to do anything to rectify the situation.

'Life Commutation' as it is called in the RAF was once available to all officers (for ORs it was only permissible in order to finance an 'approved project'...!!) But, in the late 1970s the Government decided to phase it out. It was ruled that only those serving on or before 31 Mar 78 could still use the life commutation facility, and only on that proportion of reckonable service earned up to 6 Apr 80.

To illustrate the difference, when I PVR'd I had the choice of either:

£21381.52 per annum (gross) with a tax-free lump sum of £64144.56

or, with life commutation:

£18566.89 per annum (gross) with a tax-free lump sum of £109544.54

However, with savings interest rates as low as they are I considered that, as I didn't actually need the whole £110K lump sum all in one go and since secure investment rates are so low, I'd take the larger pension instead.

As for keeling over after retirement - the moral is don't do nothing! Find something to do - even if it's only quite simple. Otherwise you'll just atrophy, the actuaries reckon.

Beagle - You probably are correct in saying that one needs to do something. Perhaps the early demise is amongst those for whom the problems of original thought and not having a structured life and all that money to spend is just too much!
I spent mine wisely (hindsight of course) and found a nice little earner on my own and very contented with my hectic life.
Good luck to retirees

Its very true!! Just look at the mortality rate of other services like the Fire and Police services, they drop like flies after the age of 55!!

It ain't necessarily so. I can't speak for the fire service but a quick look at Police Orders here in the middle bit of the country regularly shows pensioners who retired in the sixties finally passing on. The secret is, enjoy the job by all means but have a life outside as well!!

My dear old Dad hasn't dropped dead, just yet, despite having retired, at age 55, in the late 1970s, and despite the 'life shortening' stress of a 37 year RAF career which encompassed flying ops in WWII and other subsequent conflicts, some test flying, etc. etc, and which included being part of the pensions trough with which we rewarded the 'wartime bulge' who stayed in for a full career after the war....

He did work full time for another ten years after his retirement from the RAF though, did lots of flying and gliding, and still does a little consultancy, aged 80......... He still meets up with four of his wartime comrades every year on or near the anniversary of their having been shot down, too!

Top bloke!

Tommy Thompson, single, lived and breathed the air force. He retired from RAF Marham as a Sqn Ldr Spec Aircrew aged 55 and was dead the next week.

OTOH he is the only early death that I know of. Get some outside interests is the best advice. Also remember that YOU owe the service nothing after the age of 38. From that age they take your pension off your pay and pay you less and less as the years go on.

For instance you might earn £40K at age 37 and again at 38 etc but from age 38 you would have had a pension of say £12K so your real pay is now only 28K. By the time you are 55 your real pay has dropped to say £18K. Sobering thought eh! This is based on the fact that you could have earned the £40K with BAE or some such and drawn your pension.

I understand something similar happens with Doctors on retirement - a Doctor told me that a third of Doctors die within 6 months of retiring, a third have some sort of mental breakdown and rest take up Golf.

Personally I have always thought that going insane was better than golf!

Beagle,

I think you were badly advised there. In simple terms you turned down £45K cash in hand tax free for an extra £3k per year (taxed).

If you had the money you could have paid yourself out of the 45K whilst it earned some interest. If, God forbid, you were to keel over next week your loved ones would also have the benefit of that money.

At 0% interest, the RAF only gains if you live longer than 45/3 x 1.33 (tax element) ie about 20 years after retirement. And they make the interest on the money you didn't take.

To all who still have rights under the Life commutation scheme think carefully before turning it down.

After all, it was stopped to save the government money!!

Oh s**t

Just when I was starting to enjoy that large sum of money from both resettlement and whole life commutation that I got two years ago I have something else to worry about.:uhoh:

PS. Please don't tell my students either - and give them yet more to worry about:\

Good news for BEags, less so for Shackman: Although normally made at retirement, election for life commutation can be made at any time - er, while you're still alive that is! So if BEags thinks he got it wrong, he can do it any time - decreasing amount will be realised as time goes on of course.

Less good for Shackman - you can't change your mind the other way! But of course life commutation does what it says on the tin - when you finally peg out, pension reverts to uncommuted figure for calculation of widow's pension. That may or may not be good news .....

Above facts (unsurprisingly?!?) not terribly well publicised by inmates of Handbrake House........

£45K at 3% per annum gross interest equals about £810 after tax if you pay 40% to Uncle Gordon........ Even the extra £3k pension is worth £1800 after tax. Plus it becomes index-linked at 55 whereas the £45K justs sits there gaining not much income. Hence the advice being if you have an urgent need for the extra available from life commutation, fair enough - go for it. Personally I don't, so the higher pension rate is more attractive.

It would, of course, be an entirely different matter if risk-free 10% savings rates were still available!

John DP..

Granted these people are mentioned in orders as retiring in the sixties but you will find that the large majority, are officers whom have retired from the service early, with an injury caused through work at a young age, not necessarily doing the full 30 yrs service, often only completing a few years service outside their probationary period.

Some do do the full term and live on to a great old age but these are in a very small minority.

It gives the impression that they had a good old go at the pension funds but rarely this is the real picture.

This table comes from a study conducted by Boeing a while ago. Scary reading for those planning to work to 65!

Age at Retirement ----------- Average Age At Death

49.9 -------------------------------- 86
51.2 -------------------------------- 85.3
52.5 -------------------------------- 84.6
53.8 -------------------------------- 83.9
55.1 -------------------------------- 83.2
56.4 -------------------------------- 82.5
57.2 -------------------------------- 81.4
58.3 -------------------------------- 80
59.2 -------------------------------- 78.5
60.1 -------------------------------- 76.8
61 ---------------------------------- 74.5
62.1 -------------------------------- 71.8
63.1 -------------------------------- 69.3
64.1 -------------------------------- 67.9
65.2 -------------------------------- 66.8

Good decision to get out early Beags!

TT

Hmmm. I don't doubt your source, but I wonder how big the sample was? I know plenty of people who retired at 65 who are now in their 70s and 80s. As the study has 65 yr old retirees kicking it on average a year or so later, there must have been a whole load of peeps who fell over the day after they retired. Now that is scary!

I claim no expert knowledge. The table is pure plagiarism from a report by Dr. Ephrem Cheng which he wrote about 25 years ago. I used it in a study a few years back :yuk:

It was based on a pensions study, commissioned by Boeing (I think), so that they could assess whether the company pensions scheme was adequately funded. That in itself sound familiar!

Admittedly it is not new, but if the stats were accurate then, they shouldn't have changed that much. Perhaps another couple of years nowadays, but ........

What is particularly interesting in the study is the conclusion that for every year one works beyond age 55, one loses 2 years of life span on average.

From Google:

"The Boeing experience is that employees retiring at age of 65 receive pension checks for only 18 months, on average, prior to death. Similarly, the Lockheed experience is that employees retiring at age of 65 receive pension checks for only 17 months, on average, prior to death. Dr. David T. Chai indicated that the Bell Labs experience is similar to those of Boeing and Lockheed based on the casual observation from the Newsletters of Bell Lab retirees. A retiree from Ford Motor told Dr. Paul Tien-Lin Ho that the experience from Ford Motor is also similar to those in Boeing and Lockheed. "

Just think how much earlier I could have retired if I hadn't spent so much at all those Happy Hours. Then again, mabe not!

TT

The real trick is to keep getting paid and not working.

I think I know why there is an early mortality. If I take a day off I have a few chores - cut the grass, tidy the garage, sweep the leaves, cut the hedges, drain the ditch, relay the patio etc.

A surepticous phone call to me pa is often necessary to get me of the hook.

The early mortalty is clearly due to overwork after retiring and not stopping work.