Now it’s your turn
Readers give their advice on the subjects that could come to affect you
THIS week we have two letters from readers commenting on recent articles on these pages. First, Frank Smith, a GMB trade union rep, makes some extremely useful comments about the ability to access pension benefits from an employer’s scheme if you take early retirement or voluntary redundancy. This is really useful reading for anyone in a final salary scheme, particularly those who have service in the Local Government Scheme in Strathclyde. Eddie Wright has had a similar experience to Amy Saunders, who featured in a recent article about car-hire companies. With a bit of effort, Eddie managed to get the charge down from €200 to €110 – but it’s still a lot of money to pay for damage that he wasn’t responsible for. And it highlights the importance of making sure that you photograph and date any damage on cars that you are renting at the point when you take the car away. Please keep the comments coming.
Drop me a line at moneydoctor@ dailyrecord.co.uk if you have anything to say about any of the questions or answers you read here, or indeed if you have a money or consumer query of your own. I READ your article about the person who was enquiring about his Strathclyde Local Government pension scheme.
You are correct in stating that he cannot take his 25 per cent out at the moment however, if he applies for early retirement or voluntary redundancy and is accepted, he will then be given his pension.
He can also apply for flexible
retirement when he is 55, which also entitles him to access his pension. But he is unable to earn more with his working hours and pension combined than he would earn while working full time.
As he has 35 years service, he would roughly have to reduce his working week to about 20-25 hours.
All LGPS Scotland were 80ths up until 2009 then 60ths until 2015 when it became 49ths.
If his final salary was £30,000, he would have 27 years at 80ths = £10,125 plus lump sum times three = £30,375; six at 60ths = £3000; two at 49ths = £1224.
His yearly pension would be £14,349 and he is able to give up about 25 per cent of this £3587 to get £12 back for each pound giving a tax-free lump sum of £43,047 + his earlier lump sum of £30,375 = £73,422 and yearly pension of £10,762. Alternatively, when he is 60 he can retire as he has what is known as the 85 year rule and he will suffer no penalties.
At the moment if he just applies to retire and is granted it as he has this rule of 85 he also suffers no penalties Frank Smith I HAVE just read your recent article on car hire costs and wanted to let you know that we had a similar experience exactly a year ago.
We arrived on an evening flight, picked up the car keys in the terminal and went to the car pick-up point.
It was dark and there were no staff to check out car.
We left and went to the hotel. The following morning we noticed some scuffs and marks on the car. When we returned the car again no staff were present and we dropped off the key in the drop box.
In our next credit card statement, we had been charged €200 for damage.
We complained to the booking service that we had used and the charge was dropped to about €110. We’re just back from Lanzarote where we hired from a different company. Again no staff and a poorly lit area to pick up hire car from.
We took photos and a video and will do same irrespective of pick-up situation. Your advice (as always) was to do this. Eddie Wright