Case Study - USS and mixed pensions
Robert is in his early 60s and has partially retired - he is working part-time at Glasgow University and started claiming part of his pension. He has a mixed pension pot, including NHS and USS pensions.
How long have you worked at Glasgow University? I have worked at the University for Glasgow for 6 years. Prior to this I worked in other HEIs for 2 years. In addition, I was employed within the NHS in Scotland and England for a total of 17 years.
Which pension scheme/s have you contributed to? I have contributed to the USS scheme for 6 years and have preserved benefits in the NHS Superannuation schemes for both Scotland and England. Preserved benefits mean that I am no longer contributing to that scheme, but my past contributions are held until retirement age, under the rules of that scheme. In an additional layer of complexity to the pension picture, I also hold a small independent stakeholder pension, through some years of employment outwith these superannuation schemes.
Do you know how much pension you will receive? As I approached 60, I started investigating what options were available regarding claiming pension benefits. As part of my NHS pension contributions were within the earlier NHS Superannuation Scheme, these could be claimed at age 60, rather than 65. Whilst I have several pension pots, none of them alone would be sufficient to retire on at present, however, a combination of part pension and part-time working was feasible.
Have you had any financial advice about your pension? I discovered that you can book a one hour consultation through the Money Helper Pension Wise website, if you are over 50 and have a workplace or personal pension. This was really helpful in getting advice on the various options on lump sum payments versus pension that are available. So far, I have opted to and take the 25% tax-free lump sum and to maximise the long-term regular pension payment. I explored claiming other pensions early, however there is a corresponding reduction in payment. Projections from pension providers (and the USS pension site calculator) were useful in assessing the pros and cons of early payment.
How are you finding partial retirement? Taking everything into account, I discussed reducing my hours with my line manager and continuing to work part-time at UoG, while claiming part of my NHS pension. I was supported in this by my line manager, using the flexible working policies. My experience of ‘partial retirement’ has been beneficial. Whilst some flexibility is required to manage my workload, this has given me a better work-life balance. With the USS and State pension age increasing, and the expectation of longer working lives, 60 seemed too early to fully retire. Staying connected with colleagues and work was also important, at the same time as having quality personal time.
Case study - UGPS
Stevie retired early, at the age of 58, in 2020 after 41 years working full-time at UofG. Stevie contributed to the UGPS.
Please can you tell me a bit about yourself ?
My name is Stevie Lawrence and I joined the university in 1978 so when I took early retirement in January 2020, I’d been working there for just over 41 years. I always worked in what is now called audio visual services in a Technical and Specialist job family and, when I retired, my role was Deputy Manager of the audio-visual team.
Which pension scheme/s have you contributed to?
When I first started at the University I joined the UGPS. When my post reached level 6 I was eligible to join the USS – and I know that quite a few people did make that move – but, out of ignorance more than anything else I didn’t but actually I’m quite glad I stayed with UGPS as I’ve been quite happy with it and never had any problems. When the financial crash started to kick in gaps started to appear in the UGPS and employees had to start making bigger contributions but at the same time the university was contributing more so I didn’t have any problems with that. And compared to other people, outside the University, it was a fantastic scheme.
When did you first start thinking about retirement?
I first got a pension projection when I was 55. I was just curious and got in touch with the pensions section of the Finance Office – they said that although I could, in theory, begin to take out my pension at 55, unless I had won the lottery, it wouldn’t be enough to live on.
But the idea of retiring had sort of taken hold than and in the next couple of years I thought about it and, when I was 57 I got another projection for me retiring when I was 60, which would have been in September 2021. I contacted the Finance Office again and they arranged for the projection to be sent to me which arrived about 3 weeks later. And, once the projection arrived, my thought processes really changed because I realised that retiring really was a financial possibility.
Then, in 2019, a voluntary severance scheme was announced and, as I was already thinking about retiring, I applied and, after lots of toing and froing from the admin side of things, I left on 31st January 2020. This was a year earlier than I’d originally be intending to retire but the voluntary severance deal meant that it worked out about the same, financially, to leave earlier.
From a practical point of view there was quite a lot of paperwork involved – through HR and I also had to get the contract checked through a lawyer – but once that was all completed it went through quite smoothly. I then got a few separate payments – my lump sum and also my final year salary – so I had to have a few phone calls with HMRC to make sure I didn’t get a tax bill that I wasn’t due. But they were very helpful at HMRC and, hopefully, that’s all now sorted.
Did you get any financial advice?
No, I didn’t actually although they do recommend you do. But I’d always got financial advice from my colleagues and so on and always tried to have a meeting once a year with my bank and so on. So at the moment I’ve just put the money in a savings bank – I haven’t bought any annuities or anything – until I decide what to do – but financially – with my savings and the pensions - I’m fine so I didn’t need to make a decision right away.
And how has retirement been for you after 41years of working at the University?
It was really weird because, on my last day, after all the leaving dos, I just walked out of the door, just like I would on a normal day. I’m a musician and I had a gig that night and the next morning I woke up and, for the first time in 40 odd years, my head was completely empty – in a good way! – it wasn’t filled with thoughts of work or knowing that I’d have to be back in on the Monday. And it’s not that I hated my job – I enjoyed it – bits of it anyway. But I hadn’t realised how much it was in my head the whole time and it was just removed overnight – it was a very strange feeling! And that felling has lasted for the whole year – I just have this headspace and that is just the best thing. I don’t have a bucket list of things I want to but, before Covid hit anyway, I felt like I had more time to enjoy the things I like doing – going to gigs and enjoying other people’s company and not always feeling the need to rush things because of work in the morning. And once I retired, I started running again, so I’ve lost some weight and am much fitter than I was a couple of years ago. So, at the moment at least, and even with Covid and lockdown, I have absolutely no regrets. Nobody I know who’s retired has any regrets about stopping work – you just have to make sure that you can financially afford it and that you’ve got enough to live on until – or if – the state pension starts – I had to guesstimate my finances for the next ten years. It’s stating the obvious but retirement is more to do with finances than age.
The Phenomenon of Retirement
Dr Sheena E. E. Blair, former Occupational Therapy Programme Director at Glasgow Caledonian University, reflects on "Life transitions, retirement identity and the centrality of our chosen occupations: a ten years post retirement reflection and analysis"
Key ideas: retirement identity, identity continuity, life transitions, structuring lives in retirement and the centrality of doing
Disclaimer
Please can I stress that this account is not offered as a blueprint for how to retire because that process is deeply personal and unique. It is also not a binary event but a multi-layered and dynamic one which requires negotiation and re-negotiation with self over time. My account draws upon my own life experience as an occupational therapist and an educator but I hope that there might be some resonance with the experience of others and that it might prompt some reactions and discussion.
In preparation for this short talk, I was guided by the premise that when planning retirement we often omit both the socio-emotional aspect and rethinking of our occupational lives. Two sets of theoretical ideas are offered - the psychology of life transitions and those from occupational science concerning the centrality of doing in our lives. I plan to divide the presentation into three sections beginning with a brief profile, how ideas from life transitions both help me make sense of retirement and flag up potential resilience factors. Finally, the constellation and patterns of doing before and during retirement until this point may suggest some things about my identity as a retired person.
Profile
I am 72 years of age and a retired occupational therapist and educationalist/academic. It is 12 years since I left my full time last post as Head of Department at a University and 10 years since I left a part time position at the same university. For the last 10 years I have worked as a freelance educationalist. I also have an ad hoc job as an assistant registrar conducting weddings and this is something that I have done for seventeen years – beginning in 2004 as I began to think about retirement. I live on my own and have two children and one grandson. My hobbies include gardening, Pilates, walking, upcycling, reading especially poetry and travel.
Already, you might be forming an idea of how I spend time and maybe what roles I occupy and perhaps what matters to me. You might also detect how I made my attempt to negotiate my retirement and some issues about how I construct my own identity. Although, I spent more of my working life as an educator than an occupational therapist my mind set is still concerned with what people do. Occupational therapists are concerned with what people do, what form this takes, what the function of their chosen doing is and especially what it means to people. Also, you might consider just how many times during the changes and transitions you have made it life you have been asked – “What are you going to do?” Also, each of our life transitions may be accompanied by very specific forms of doing for example becoming a parent has attendant activities of preparing for the baby and nesting behaviours. These forms of “doing” are intrinsic to our sense of self and becomes woven through our identities.
I started to think about retirement in my early 50’s and although tantalising in terms of what freedom this might bring, I was also ambivalent and acutely aware of how huge an experience this might be –financially, organisationally, socially and emotionally. I also began to think – what am I going to do? My internal narrative was bound up with hopes of being a Granny, helping care for my father who had a stroke, transforming my garden, socialising lots and travelling. Often that internal narrative does not match the retirement reality. I did begin to review my financial situation and also swiftly realised that I needed to feel useful and applied for and was successful in gaining the post as an Assistant Registrar. Also, I realised that if possible it would be wise to reduce hours and work part time for a period if at all possible. I was keenly aware of how much of my sense of self was bound up with my job.
How do the ideas from the life cycle and life transitions help make sense of the phenomenon of retirement?
A life transition has been explained by social scientists as a discontinuity. However, by the time we get to retirement, we have all negotiated many life transitions and in doing that have possibly built up a resilience and sense of agency about how to manage change and discontinuity in our lives. A life transition requires us to adapt, consider new parameters in our lives and deal with unpredictability. Even although retiring seems to suggest a predictable and voluntary type of transition new ways of doing, being, becoming and belonging are required. Whilst we can carefully research our financial positions (which is absolutely essential) prior to the event, and figure out our stability factors and social supports, the one aspect which requires constant rethinking is our identity and how we re-conceive our sense of self. In short, what will our retirement identity be?. A frequent saying is “Did you not used to be”? From another perspective, a time of transition can be thought to be a kind of lightening conductor whereby our untapped potential may be developed.
Realistically, in later life (most frequently synonymous with retirement) the number of possible transitions occurring simultaneously is high. For example, leaving full time work, increased caring responsibilities, change of financial circumstances, changes to health and wellbeing can puncture our resilience and challenge adaptation mechanisms. What research tells us is that when there are multiple transitional events happening in close succession our resilience, health and wellbeing is threatened.
A number of theorists have attempted to outline stages of adaptation which can be helpful in understanding that transitions take time for example a preparation stage, an encounter with the reality of changed circumstances, adjustment to that and eventual stabilisation. Running alongside those defined stages is the concomitant changes to self, identity and self-esteem. Mediating factors which off-set stressors, can be recognising our sources of social and internal support and stability factors which may be people, ideas, faith, places, or objects.
Social scientists have also written about how to make transitions safe which includes the idea of a transitional space. In terms of retirement, this concerns time and planning for the event and allowing yourself to “be” in retirement. My transitional space began with going part time and then was my garden and investing loads of time and energy in redesigning and establishing this. The idea of the transitional object/s is also pertinent here and I would ask you to think off what objects are most meaningful to you. My transitional objects have been pretty consistent throughout my life and are photographs, books, plants and pictures. The literature on transitions shows a consensus here in that as human beings we are trying to achieve a sense of control, continuity and meaningfulness.
Already you will be able to detect a focus upon intrinsic doing and repertoires of doing in managing any discontinuity in our lives including retirement. What we actually do is part of this adjustment and that we perhaps have recognisable internalised patterns of doing in seeking to conceive a retirement identity.
So, you are retiring soon– what are you going to do?
Human beings have an occupational nature and we have a series of continuous occupations such as looking after ourselves and presentation of self, work related activities, family related activities, faith based and social and recreational activities. We also have transient occupations related to the nature of life events as discussed earlier – leaving home, first job, parenthood, divorce. All those occupations tend to be in relation to others and highlight the reciprocal nature of both transition and occupation. What we do is also intrinsically linked with health and wellbeing. My father’s mantra used to be that you had to create something every day – even if it was a mess but that was vital for your wellbeing. He embraced retirement and became a skilled wood turner spending many hours in his workshop producing incredible objects. My own doctoral study concerned the role of learning in later life and reached the conclusion that it was for health and wellbeing.
Retirement requires that we recreate a sense of self and manage time in different ways. As such it is an occupational transition and we need to recognise the occupational changes incumbent on retirement. You do have to create a new order and rhythm to your days and weeks – you own your own time! There now is not the same structure to your weekdays and weekends and an occupational balance may be difficult to establish.
From an occupational scientists’ viewpoint, our constellations of doing can be considered by the analysis of:
Form – what are the patterns, roles and range characterising our occupational lives
Function – what are the chosen occupations for – self maintenance, leisure spiritual purposes
Meaning – what is invested in the chosen occupation/s
Considering retirement from this set of ideas it is not difficult to detect where possible issues related to health and wellbeing might occur if a very large part of our lives and sense of self are removed – regardless of how well you might have anticipated the state of retirement. It is not unusual for some people to actually reconsider retirement and seek new employment because it deals with time, belonging and a sense of usefulness.
Conclusion
The literature on retirement has tended to focus upon key organisational issues and perhaps not on what it means to become retired or upon retirement identity. Reconstructing our retirement identity is an on-going process. Realistically it is also intrinsically linked with later life which brings its own dynamic and recently a friend commented that she thought that her retirement had been “hi-jacked” by other life events. My view is that an age diverse workforce brings multiple benefits and that ways of offering part time or flexible working constitutes good practice and assists with the transition for all concerned. By the time retirement is due a lifetimes worth of resilience and adaptive strategies have been tested and can be employed and fine- tuned. Finally, it is not indulgent to consider what is going to offer meaning, satisfaction and joy post retirement and to find an occupational balance that sustains your health and wellbeing.