DB pension options – an object lesson in the power of inflation

The Ermine is advancing of years. It comes to us all, hopefully. I am not yet of the age when I would have quit The Firm after thirty years of service and gone to the pub to celebrate my forthcoming freedom. But it’s not that far off.

Seven years after retiring, I have now burned through half my DC pension AVC savings and invested the other half into the ISA. In cash-flow terms the Ermine is almost skint, and I am on the final approach to taking my main pension, a little early. So I asked them for the information pack.

Every pension is different, and with mine there is the usual  option to take some as a tax-free lump-sum. After that there are two options. One is to take a pension that is index-linked up to a cap, and the other option is to take a higher pension that is part non-increasing, and part index-linked up to the same cap.

Why on earth would you do that? Well, the logic is that you get a higher start, since they are paying you to take your claim of index linking off their hands. The higher start makes some sense – one is in best health at the start of retirement than at the end when you’re eyeing up a pine box. They also made something of the fact that the State Pension will turn up later, which should fight some of the later attrition.

Inflation can easily kill the higher start

It looked reasonable at first sight. There’s a common argument that people spend more in the early years of retirement, and less as they get older. Unless they are unlucky enough to end up in a care home, but fewer than 20% of us end up in a care home¹. The difference between the higher start and regular isn’t huge, however, it is about three grand p.a. after tax. But it doesn’t take much inflation to erode that, it falls behind in my early seventies and typical inflation rates of ~3%. Some people take the argument that it is the cumulative shortfall that matters,and it is true that this falls below zero later on, a few years past the age that my Dad died. But I am in much better health than either of my parents were at my age. So I might be leery of assuming I cark it at the same age, though of course I could be flattened by a bus tomorrow. Risk is tough to qualify, eh?