25th April 2015, 07:37 AM
(This post was last modified: 26th April 2015, 08:07 AM by Marc Berger.)
I did try researching the various types of pensions in archaeology but did not get very far with it. Mine is a small stakeholders pension and basically pointless. Probably stuck on the state pension which I occasionally worry about whether I got any credits for when I was at university. The charity commision accounts show some of the different pensions that some of the big unit workers get and can be informative about what possibly a self employedvarchaeologist should be trying to emulate in pricing up jobs although it can be still difficult to work out what are in pension pots, and what proportion the employers and employees pay into the "pot". The truth is that I see being a member of a council pension pot as a signing away of copyright but that's a personal illness of mine.
At a very basic level it's all about how long you think that you are going to live and when you want to retire and how much you want to retire with. The oxford archaeology accounts show that they work on an assumption that women and men retiring this year at 65 (which I an not sure is the current retirement age) will be expected to live untill 88 and 86 respectively. How much income do you want for roughly twenty years...Unfortunately after that it gets difficult to work out what's in the units pension pots and what the contributions exactly are and then having to divide by the number of employees. The Oxford units pensions are basically local government definded benifits pension schemes with cambridge and oxford county councils and although they register liabilities and employee contributions it's not possible to workout how thats apportioned. Other units might only have their directors on local government pension schemes. At the end of the day the tax payer will make up many short falls in these schemes.
As you say Gnomeking about private investment in stocks. The private sector defined pension schemes for small businesses are normally all based on employer contributions and they are normally considered to be most beneficial to the owner of the business and the first to retire. For some odd reason the Oxford accounts Show the different proportion of investements between the Oxford and Cambridge council schemes and the expected returns as a percentage. I presume that they are proportions decided by council trustees and not the Oxford unit. They include the assumption that the unit will be getting between 7% and 6.8% on equities(not sure if That is adjusted for inflation). It's interesting that their auditors want them to take out an auditors liability Limitation agreement. Not sure what one of those is for, although there does appear to be a lot of figures in brackets in the accounts.
The other thing to remember with pensions is that the government contributes 25% in tax relief but you are liable for tax on drawings...
At a very basic level it's all about how long you think that you are going to live and when you want to retire and how much you want to retire with. The oxford archaeology accounts show that they work on an assumption that women and men retiring this year at 65 (which I an not sure is the current retirement age) will be expected to live untill 88 and 86 respectively. How much income do you want for roughly twenty years...Unfortunately after that it gets difficult to work out what's in the units pension pots and what the contributions exactly are and then having to divide by the number of employees. The Oxford units pensions are basically local government definded benifits pension schemes with cambridge and oxford county councils and although they register liabilities and employee contributions it's not possible to workout how thats apportioned. Other units might only have their directors on local government pension schemes. At the end of the day the tax payer will make up many short falls in these schemes.
As you say Gnomeking about private investment in stocks. The private sector defined pension schemes for small businesses are normally all based on employer contributions and they are normally considered to be most beneficial to the owner of the business and the first to retire. For some odd reason the Oxford accounts Show the different proportion of investements between the Oxford and Cambridge council schemes and the expected returns as a percentage. I presume that they are proportions decided by council trustees and not the Oxford unit. They include the assumption that the unit will be getting between 7% and 6.8% on equities(not sure if That is adjusted for inflation). It's interesting that their auditors want them to take out an auditors liability Limitation agreement. Not sure what one of those is for, although there does appear to be a lot of figures in brackets in the accounts.
The other thing to remember with pensions is that the government contributes 25% in tax relief but you are liable for tax on drawings...
.....nature was dead and the past does not exist