Was that an intentional missing of the point? Probably. 36% of union members voted for the strike. This is not the same as “a strike that only a third of their members support”. Support /= voted for.

Junky – I hope you don’t teach English, as your reading and comprehension is a fail. Go back and try re-reading the last comment of mine you quoted and see if you can work out what it actually means, and why you need a 4th column in order to prove my conjecture.

Just a few points to help you out:
Final salary/career average wasn’t the only difference between the two options I had, hence that wasn’t the factor in one costing more than another – apologies for not making that clear (I was only using it to explain why I understood both systems quite well, having looked at both options in fine detail).
I am better off having been under career average than final salary due to having not got a pay rise – or at least not one which has kept up with inflation. Are you really so stupid that you don’t understand this concept?
I had a go with an inflation calculator, and whilst I finished off on more than I started on, I finished on less than I was on 9 months in when I completed training and got a big rise. I’m pretty confident I would have been better to have been on career average for my whole time in that pension scheme. I’d very very surprised if I was at all unique in this lack of progression in salary in the private sector.

This ijs just wrong and making your self look stupid even more so for not even relaising how stupid you are being

Back at you. Though reading that (and the rest of your post), I hope you don’t teach children at all with that standard of English usage.

It would have been much more better [ 😉 ] if you had attacked the maths rather than the english. Then again you cant you just suggest you can

I am better off having been under career average than final salary due to having not got a pay rise – or at least not one which has kept up with inflation. Are you really so stupid that you don’t understand this concept?

You dont understand it. How can a pension based on your wage be better if your wage is lower? The calculation method is irrelevant as your salary is lower therefore your pension is. If your wage increases so will the average [ or the final salary]. Can you show me with some maths how this works as you describe? PLEASE would you it should be easy my table took about a minute.
Instead of telling me I have done it wrong do some maths to show this. I am quite prepared to admit I am wrong if you do it with some numbers rather than a shitty attack of my english – this may be true but it does not make my argument incorrect which you can easily do with some numbers.
You appear to be one of those people who wont admit they are wrong and just keep going. Unless you want to do some maths I have nothing further to add [ see add get it ]

If your pay rises don’t match inflation over your working life, the only way you would be better off under a final salary pension is if you or someone else is contributing a greater % of pay into the pot, or if the other terms differed.

Price inflation greatly effects the time value of money. £100 went further 20 years ago then it does today. £100 invested in your pension 20 years ago is worth more than £100 invested yesterday.

You are almost always worse off under a final salary

The armed forces all spend a lot of time at lower paid ranks/rates before promotion with the associated payrises therefore almost everyone will be worse off on an average salery pension. If the Hutton stuff is applied fully then I would expect to see a bit of an armed forces exodus. Unless of course that’s part of the cunning plan…

It would have been much more better [ ] if you had attacked the maths rather than the english.

I was just going for the easy target 🙁 – and there was nothing actually wrong with your numbers apart from them answering the wrong question. I’d have given you some numbers a while ago if you’d asked for them (and not been so rude about my mathematical abilities that I doubted you’d believe them).

Unfortunately to make this work, we can’t ignore inflation as that’s a fundamental issue here (well I could normalise the figures, but it would look dodgy and you’d accuse me of cheating). So here are in column 1 are real salary figures, and in column 2 the same figures adjusted for inflation (which is the number used when calculating a career average salary). I’ll use 1.0 as the baseline salary in year 1 and constant 5% inflation rate (the actual rate doesn’t make any difference to the conclusion) This is the simple version with no pay rise at all:

year 1 1.00 1.55
year 2 1.00 1.48
year 3 1.00 1.41
year 4 1.00 1.34
year 5 1.00 1.28
year 6 1.00 1.22
year 7 1.00 1.16
year 8 1.00 1.10
year 9 1.00 1.05
year 10 1.00 1.00

Final salary: 1.00
Career average salary: 1.26

Now for the slightly more complicated version with a constant but below inflation pay rise:

year 1 1.00 1.55
year 2 1.03 1.52
year 3 1.06 1.49
year 4 1.09 1.46
year 5 1.13 1.44
year 6 1.16 1.41
year 7 1.19 1.38
year 8 1.23 1.36
year 9 1.27 1.33
year 10 1.30 1.30

Final salary: 1.30
Career average salary: 1.42

Of course in the real world things aren’t constant and sometimes you might even get an above inflation increase even in the private sector, but it doesn’t change the conclusion that if your pay doesn’t keep up with inflation you’re better off on a career-average than final salary scheme.

It would appear that if you continued those figures for 20 -40 years it would no longer hold true which is probably a fairer time scale for a pension calculation. The second example will be better by 14 years in for example.
I dont understand why your second column is not 1 at the start can you explain please? Why is the average salary used for your calculation higher than the actual salary?

It would appear that if you continued those figures for 20 -40 years it would no longer hold true

If I extend it to 40 years, with 5% inflation and no salary increase I get:
Final salary: 1.00
Career average salary: 3.02

with 5% inflation and 3% annual increase I get:
Final salary: 3.17
Career average salary: 4.72

The point you’re missing here is that as you extend the period the career average also increases – and at a greater rate than the final salary does.

I dont understand why your second column is not 1 at the start can you explain please?

Ah – if you don’t understand that, that would explain the reason you’ve missed the point. It’s because the second column is adjusted for inflation. In other words it’s the value of that salary at year 10 (in the example I gave – at year 40 in my recalc). ie after 9 years of 5% inflation, something which was worth £1 is now worth £1.55.

Why is the average salary used for your calculation higher than the actual salary?

Because it’s the arithmetic mean of the inflation adjusted salary, and the inflation adjusted salary at the start is higher than the inflation adjusted salary at the end (just as the case is for me over the last 10 years).

still confused but busy at work will post up a reply later

so the average salary is effectively weighted to be what it would be in real terms but the final salary is not.
Is that really the case?

I dont care I’m still having the day off.

🙄

I dont care I’m still having the day off striking.

actually I’m not striking, not a member of NUT or ATL

I’m a stay at home dad.. I’m going to strike over child benefit and working family tax credits..

that’ll teach ’em…