Confusion

I had a "pension" talk at work today.  The final salary pension is ending in April 2013 and so we need to make decisions about where we go with our pensions now.

Seriously, talks like this I usually glaze over in about three minutes flat. I genuinely struggle to keep awake and  I have the attention span of a fish. 

But, today,  I thought I really ought to care about this.   So,  I am going to listen AND take notes AND make some hard arse decisions based on fact and intelligent conversation.  

Well, shit me. 

Who invented this pension malarkey?  A bloke?  Because no woman would have made it that confusing and ridiculous. 

Here's the thing.  I'm not a financial genius, in fact I find it hard to count without using my fingers.  I want to pay my money in  each month until I reach 65.  I want my employer to add a huge amount until I reach 65 and then some kind soul pay it back into my bank account each month so I can continue to enjoy the lifestyle. 

Apparently this is not how it happens.  Some corporation takes all your wages and has a whale of time piss arsing about on the stock market and if they make mega bucks, woooohooooo, and if not, ooops sorry about that.   And lately the latter has happened.  Where's the fun in that for me?

So, after taking a load of notes that mainly consisted of hearts, flowers and noughts and crosses I eventually decided to pay more money investing in AVC's (  I can't even remember what that means).  It would go straight out of my wages, I wouldn't notice it and I would be slightly better off when I take my 25% lump sum. ( Please note, that by this stage the government may well have increased the retirement age to 307 so I will be far too knackered to enjoy said lump sum anyway.)

When I returned to the office my colleagues and I had a chat and they all totally messed up my train of thought and said that pensions probably still wouldn't be worth anything in 30 years anyway so what's the point of investing more?  Jeeeezuuuuussss.  Really?   I hadn't thought of that.  By this point I was sobbing, my head was throbbing and I was ready to retire right there and then. 

So, here's what I'm going to do.  The money I was going to pay into my AVC's, I'm going to start using for extra payments towards my mortgage.  This way it will be clear sooner, I will save tons (apparently) in interest and get more years to live out my days skipping through the countryside hand in hand with Jurgen.

Sounds like a plan, doesn't it?  And a pretty good one in my opinion.

Now, I just have to find out if my mortgage company will accept overpayments without penalising me.  Shit the bed?  Really?  Bloody hell, don't even get me started......

 

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