In my opinion the Teachers’ Pension Scheme is pretty good (let’s start with a bit of an understatement!).
Those members who accumulate a number of years of service are I am sure going to find that those benefits form the bedrock of their retirement benefits.
But care needs to be taken by members to get a good understanding of the scheme and the way the benefits are created particularly if they move to part time employment later on in their career.
One client who we met with this week was particularly concerned about the impact on her final benefits as a result of working three days per week rather than five.
The good news is that the scheme uses the full time equivalent salary to calculate her benefits.
The bad news is that she has to work a lot longer than one year in order to accrue the equivalent benefits for a years service.
In fact rather an working 365 days to accrue a years benefit she actually has to work for 511 days (well there had to be a catch didn’t there?)
Anyway our message is to any member of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme is quite simple – make sure you understand how your scheme works particularly if you move to part time employment.
Credit where it is due the scheme website is very helpful and well worth a visit.
Photo credit: Flickr/LulaTaHula
