Its officially Pension Awareness Day! In part 1 of this year’s EAPF Pension Awareness Week campaign – we want to help you feel retirement ready. We have some useful information on the retirement process, steps to take and how to boost your pension.
Helping you start retirement planning
Retirement is a major decision that can feel complicated and daunting, especially if you're new to the process and want the best results for you.
It’s never too early to make a start. The better you understand your expected retirement benefits, the better equipped you are to decide if it might be necessary to bolster it – especially if you plan to retire before your normal pension age. We often hear members say they wish they’d tuned in sooner!
When it comes to the process, we’ve created some useful steps and guidance to understand what to expect so you can confidently start retirement planning.
See what steps you should take
EA Retirement process and timeline infographic
We’ve created some new retirement process infographics for members who may want to understand the process from the point of you telling your employer that you want to retire to receiving your pension. This will guide will help you see who needs to do what, when certain steps will happen and how long it should take from start to finish.
There are 2 versions as the process differs slightly for members who’ve bought Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs). Click the one relevant to you below.
Retirement process for members without AVCs
Retirement process for members with AVCs
Want to boost your pension?
There are 2 ways to top up your EAPF pension. These are called Additional Pension Contributions (APCs) or Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs). Whilst these might sound similar in name, they’re two very different things and both come with pros and cons.
APCs
With APCs, you buy a guaranteed amount of additional pension in the LGPS which is added to your standard pension.
AVCs
AVCs are investment based funds. You're able to choose from a number of different types of investments with either Standard Life or Prudential, our chosen providers.
Read more about the pros and cons of buying APCs and AVCs.
National pension awareness campaign and live shows
The national Pension Awareness campaigners offer engaging and informative resources for everyone, whether you’re new to pensions or nearing retirement. They also run live shows bringing important pension topics to life.
This year’s campaign includes:
- A 6-Step Pension challenge checklist
- Live shows running between 15 to 17 September
- Free, impartial, and simple pension information
- Watch their catch-up shows
- Useful articles, tools and resources
Don’t worry if you don’t manage to join their live shows, they’re being recorded and will be on their website shortly after. You can even watch their shows from previous years which are really interesting too. You can register to join them or watch their previous shows by clicking below.
Book on to a live show at pensionawarenessday.com
They use generic content and not specific to the EAPF, but useful nevertheless! And these live shows aren’t to be confused with the EAPF pension webinars which will run through October and November.
We’ll give more details on our EAPF webinar sessions later this week. Deferred and Pensioner sessions will be covered in Part 2 and Contributing member sessions will be covered in Part 3.
Keep an eye out for Part 2 of our EAPF Pension Awareness Week series on 17 September!