Out of curiosity, I also went to check my own pension statement.
At least in my statement, I don’t have any section like “pension accrued from unpaid periods.” The section “social benefits that have accrued pension” is there (though it’s a very insignificant column, luckily…). As I understand it, this column includes unemployment benefits, etc.
A university degree is indeed listed, but it’s not clear how it would affect the pension. Or would this “higher education bonus” then be added on top of the paid pension?
Anyway, it’s useless hair-splitting to even consider such a thing at this stage of my career, as the pension system will have time to be scrapped several times before I get to enjoy its fruits (one just has to hope the fruits aren’t moldy by then ).
@elbi if I recall correctly, it was just a single line on that statement, not its own heading, so it’s not that easy to spot. You don’t get any major boost to your pension from those; I had a couple of degrees + children, so apparently something comes from parental leave, and the total amount was in the double digits… for me, it was equivalent to less than a year of working.
That’s true, it’s best to stress later. I believe the system will hold up well enough, but this “degrees accumulate – or they don’t” type of discussion shows how poorly decisions stand the test of time (and we are talking about predictable pensions). After “this solves everything” type measures like life expectancy coefficients or gradual increases in the retirement age, a new discussion always starts up again quickly. I interpret Määttänen to mean that many other avenues have already been exhausted—for example, raising the retirement age no longer provides an impact, higher accrual rates have been phased out—so the focus turns to pensions already in payment + side branches like degrees.
That eternal grumbling from the youth that “those people get a better return on the earnings-related pension contributions they’ve paid”…
“Kauppalehti asked the Finnish Centre for Pensions (Eläketurvakeskus) for calculations on the ratio of paid pension contributions to pensions received for people of different ages.
The calculations from the Finnish Centre for Pensions reveal the well-known fact that there are significant differences between age groups.”
YES, THERE ARE DIFFERENCES, but from 1968 to the present, the return is at a very similar level in the range of 1.68–1.62.
Good table. Surely that’s inflation-adjusted, isn’t it? Still, an absolutely abysmal performance compared to investing your pension money yourself for 40 years. So, a 68% total return on pension funds for someone born in 1983, but by investing in index funds yourself, the returns would be in a completely different league.
It’s also interesting that the table in Kauppalehti uses the word “etuus” (benefit). I was pondering with Gemini what “etuus” actually means. A pension is therefore social security, to which one gains a predefined right based on one’s career or the lack thereof.
). As I understand it, this column includes unemployment benefits, etc.
).
