Genesis

Kate has been made what we think is a very good offer from the NHS to cash her pension in now that we have been exiled from the Uk tax system for a full 5 years. The question is what to do? The advantages are that the monies come to NZ totally tax free whereas if she waited until age 60 to draw the NHS pension every payment would be taxed at whatever her prevailing tax rate was.

The 2nd point is if she died between now and then WITHOUT cashing it in her next of kin only get half the value of the fund.

The final point and my biggest worry is will there be a pot to piss in come 18 years in relation to the NHS fund? Some might say 'NHS..safe as houses'..yeah right, look at Lehman Bros, Portugal and Eire all places few thought would go bust, especially Eire which was the golden child of Europe in terms of growth and development a while back. In short I no longer trust anyone or anything.

I guess I have made my mind up...

The downside if one was to cash up is if you lived to be 95 and thus had 35 years of drawing the pension (which would be a waaay bigger sum than the cash offer now) obviously you would look a bit stupid..but will Kate even know what stupid is come 95??

BEVS

FWIW. We had the same discussions over Mr BEVs bit of NHS pension. In the end , we elected to bring it over and re-invest the money from here rather than wait to hear that there was nothing in the coffers at a later date. This happened to a cousin of Mr BEVs who had decades in a 'safe as houses', final salary company pension scheme only to be left with a reduced % of what it was supposed to be.