Expected Years Service by Retirement - This refers to any time that you have spent or will spend in a company Defined Benefits Scheme (one that pays you a pension according to the number of years service, rather than according to the size of any fund that you may accumulate).
If you have been in such a scheme for ten years, and expect to stay until retirement in twenty more, then enter 30.
If you have spent five years with such an employer and then left, enter five. However note that this calculator assumes that your salary is the relevant one, whereas in fact presumably your scheme salary was lower. In this case the calculator will OVERESTIMATE your pension.
If you have benefits from such a scheme and want to see how they affect you, then run the calculator using the term, the salary value that you had when you left the scheme, and the term to retirement that applied when you left the scheme. This will be more accurate, but still not to be relied upon.
Inflation and Growth Assumptions - Choose your own, but note that
the highest growth rate allowed in formal projections is 9% (for which inflation
is assumed to be 4.5%) and the cautious one is 5% (with inflation of 0.5%).
As well as the absolute levels of each, it is important to understand that
over the long term there cannot be a huge difference between growth and inflation,
and differentials of over 4.5% will lead to over-optimistic pension projections.
Because of the way that the calculator operates there is an added complexity when considering the effect of inflation on regular savings. In short if you invest £1000 a year then, because of inflation, it appears that each year you invest less and less in real terms. If you want to see what happens if you invest the same amount in real terms then set the Inflation at 1, and use a conservative growth rate.
Enter in the form 1.06 for 6%.
In the internal calculation the growth rate is reduced by 1% to represent fund
charges. Your actual pension costs may be different.