Having received a pension statement last week from the french system, does anyone realise how little we will get?
I have been working since 2008 here, I have accumulated 19 points and 125 topup, where ever that came from. This adds up to a massive 12.50 a month in 13 years time. I don’t know what I will spend all that on.
Will you be adding to it during the next 13 years ?
That’s strange, I’ve been registered here since 2007 and will get far more than that when I retire, I do pay 6k+ every year in cotisations though so maybe that’s the reason.
French pensions are more complicated animals than UK pensions.
In the UK all OAPs get a flat rate.
In France it depends what you’ve earned, how much you’ve paid in, and probably other things besides.
Like Tim I have been cotis’ing since 2007, I will be able to collect quite soon and I was actually pleasantly surprised at how much I will get.
I guess it’s down to how much you contribute but for each year there’s only 4 points available and think you need to declare around 12 k for that. Not sure about the topup.
If your paying 6 k cotisations a year yr top line is around 25 k, I’ve never been anywhere near that here, and some slack years with a eye problem.
All OAPs don’t get a flat rate in the UK. It still depends on how many years national insurance contributions you’ve made. And with the new one I think you get nothing until you’ve paid in for 10 years and then the amount then increases up to the max after 35 years of contributions.
And private pensions are not guaranteed. Unlike french private pensions which are guaranteed. They generally invested in stock market and so on, so in UK if your pension find doesn’t perform well you won’t get a good pension.
Yes you’re absolutely correct, sorry I worded my post badly. What was in my head, and I think I’m correct in saying, is that in the UK it simply goes on number of years contributions, and if you work and contribute for a year then it makes no difference what your earnings were during that year. So 10 years as the chairman of Asda will give the same pension entitlement as 10 years as self employed person earning peanuts. Likewise everyone who has clocked up the full number of “years” will get the same full state pension - again regardless of how much you earned and how much you contributed during your working life.
What has always worried me is the large number of Brits who moved here whilst relatively young, with nowhere near a full UK pension entitlement behind them, and have lived here either self supporting inactive or as low earning auto/micro entrepreneurs. In 11 years Barrie has apparently only accumulated 19 trimestres, ie less than 5 full years, of pension entitlement, which is a bit scary, and some will have accumulated even less and potentially none at all. I’m not sure there is enough awareness about this, I suspect that many assume it’s like the UK and every year you are technically active, automatically counts as another year in your pension pot.
Entirely agree…but aren’t we all the same when young? You don’t think of dull things like pensions then.
And for someone like Barrie, not only will there be a small french pension but the UK one is unlikely to be that generous. I’m not sure people realise that you don’t get the full UK pension unless you have enough years. If he’s only got, say, 15 years NI contributions that will be equivalent of £72 a week when he reaches 67! Plus his 3€ a week from France of course.
So 13 years to augment pension as much as possible by the sounds of it Barrie…
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I believe you can “buy” years from the UK, subject to various conditions.
I am 3 years short because when I left the UK I had 32 years and at the time you only needed 30, but now you need 35 and I still only have 32. What with that and 6 years increase in my pension age, it’s a bit of a sh1t sandwich. Saying that, my bit of a French pension will more than make up the shortfall in my UK pension - it’s the 6 extra years that hurts most!
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It’s a bit of a minefield. I’ve been working and paying into the system (various caisses depending on my activity) here for over 15 years. I’ll have a French pension albeit small but so not to lose what I’ve already paid in NI contributions in the UK, I also pay volontary contributions into the UK system. Might be worth looking into for others… 
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You can buy trimestres in France too but it’s soooo expensive that the end result just isn’t worth it (both my accountant and I looked into it and individuallly came to the same conclusion for our different situations that it just wasn’t worth it!)
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It’s worth asking about the class 2 and class 3 NICS - they are different amounts and may still give the same result to top up.
Are you an independent worker, or a salaried employee ? It can make quite a difference. As an independent worker, I was singularly unimpressed with my own projected pension (basic and complementary, those are the 2 figures you got in your statement), despite having paid in literally severals tens of thousands of Euros to the CIPAV. The first figure is your basic “state” pension, the second is a complementary, or top up pension.
The new proposed reforms up for debate in the autumn are likely to make things considerably worse for many independents as well, with their overall contributions potentially going up to about 60% of their annual revenue.
Sorry, came a bit late to the party, and so my post is a little bit redundant - that’ll teach me to read the whole thread through first
Yes I’m in the same position. I continued working in UK until I got to 30 years NI, and like you only discovered after the event that they’d changed the goal posts. Which really pisses me off as I was then self-employed but thinking I didn’t need more years I got small earnings exemption from paying NI. Had I known it would have cost me very little to get the extra years.
I asked for an estimate for buying the extra years. It is very expensive and each year you buy only adds about £4.50 a week to your pension. So to make it worthwhile you have to live long enough, I think around 12-15 years post pension age. It is of course index-linked tho’.
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Are you saying you paid tens of thousands to CIPAV, or tens of thousands cotisations in total?
I can’t find anywhere on my printout where it actually specifies how many euros CIPAV have had off of me, it is all about trimestres and points. But I think pension contributions are a relatively small proportion of total cotisations - most of it is assurance maladie, then there are the various other funds, and pension seems to get lowest priority. If you have paid several tens of thousands to CIPAV, your cotisation bill overall must be in the millions !
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Yes, Anna, my cotisations CIPAV have literally been in the 10s of thousands of Euros. On top of that several 10s of thousands of Euros of URSSAF cotisations. The CIPAV printout I received doesn’t say how much I’ve actually paid (but I know this from the demands I receive from them and the money that goes out of my account). It is incredibly stressful to receive such demands from the URSSAF and CIPAV to find out that one’s estimated pension is such a pittance in return, and that if I happen to fall ill, I’d be entitled to at most 16E/day after 3 months of stoppage ! Oh and when I went on that French website that details your pension contributions throughout your working life in France, that my projected full pension age is 73…
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Oh and all those other wonderful things about the CIPAV that no one tells you about like: if you make a loss on your business as an independent, the trimester in which you declare a loss (usually the final one in the year) isn’t counted as having been worked, therefore “null points”, and you rack up another 3 months added to your working life…
I’ve kept my Uk contributions up to date, I have 34 yrs over there.
Here your points depend on earnings but as each point has a value of around 1.25 euros a year it’s very little.
I know another person who has contributed over 15 yrs but will get less than 100 e a month.