# Police Pensions



## English Bobby (May 25, 2003)

One of the main reasons for joining the force over here is the pension, so after 30 years of pain you can relax on a golf course somewhere, relaxing in the cool English rain, sip a nice cold pint of bitter, and moan about the present police force, and how it has all changed since you were in !!
But now big companies like Boots......(do you know them ? its a large chemist chain over here)..........(chemist ? pharmacy ? ).......(you say potarto i say potatoe)......( they sell drugs and medicine...no they are not street dealers !).......have collapsed their pension systems, and it looks like we may follow.
The government used to subsidise the pension, which added to our own monthly contributions, but because of cutbacks this is to become a thing of the past. So new recruits from April this year will have to find their own schemes, and we that are left are to be told of our plight later this year. So it could mean my big retirement wil be a glass of water on a pitch and put course in a theme park !!
Have you got the same problems ?


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## bluesamurai22 (Nov 20, 2004)

Kind of a trend in the U.S. and accross the world right now. Probably due to the aging population and medical expenses shooting throught the roof.

So far it seems that the police pension plans here are safe but you never know. There have been efforts by the local communities to manage the pension plans - no thanks!. There have also been some efforts at the state level to tamper with benefits. There have even been pushes by the federal government to force all government employees into social security. :up: If that happens we are screwed.

Just in case any of these schemes succeed I have putting as much money as I can into deferred compensation (money gets put into an investment account prior to being taxed and you pay taxes when you take it out after retirement / a benefit is that you fall into a lower tax bracket now and in the future). I give until it hurts but it will be worth it in the end. :alcoholi:


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## rscalzo (Sep 16, 2005)

*New Jersey's Police/Fire Pension System* is about *1.2 BILLION* in the hole right now. It is due mainly to the following screw-ups by the state:

Discontinue the Town portion of the pension payment because the system was so overfunded due to the very good years in the stock market. (Town are now once again required to make payments but it will take five years to get them back up to where they should have been all along.:???:

Politicians trying to cover shortfalls in all their give-a-way programs by borrowing money from the pension without hope of repayment.:-&

Politicians putting all there cronies into the system that have nothing to do with law enforcment, like their own labor attorneys.:neutral:

Bumping up the salary of their political cronies the last year of employment from levels such as twenty thousand a year to eighty thousand the last year of employment (NJ Pensions (Police/Fire) are based on the last or highest one year of employment. So their buddies get a nice fat pension without the required contributions. Another trick was to roll into the base salary holiday and vacation payments to increase the base for the last year.;-)

Hiring their buddies to run the system and have NJ come out with one of the worst track records in the country for investments.8-[

Now the state is required to come up with the money. The towns are crying because they don't want to make their required contributions. They got too used to getting a free ride. Newer cops/fireman will probably get hit with a higher percentage to contributions on their end. It now stands at 8.5% of base salary.NJ is also finding out that their cheap gas due to low taxes per gallon have now caused their transportation fund to go bankrupt. We got gas but the bridges are falling down. But they managed to spend almost eight hundred million and climbing on a Transportation/Transfer Station for NJ Transit that no one uses.....So the state as a whole is about* 6 BILLION8-O *in the hole...

Ya gotta love the politicians running the show..They are at least good for a laugh and possibly an indictment or two.


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## MVS (Jul 2, 2003)

Boston in the UK? Nice, post your patch and badge sometime.



> (you say potarto i say potatoe)


 Actually, I say Padayduh... I like my steak and padayduh's. Right guys? :lol:


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