Three generations. One island. What does the pension system look like for each of them — and who pays?
⚠️ Not financial advice — illustration only. This tool exists to make inter-generational pension liability visible and personal: who accrues value, who funds the gap, and how that balance has shifted between generations. It is not a forecast of your own retirement income and takes no account of your real NI record, scheme history, or personal circumstances. See the full methodology and limitations below — for actual retirement planning, use your own pension statements and a licensed financial adviser.
I am theborn inworking inaverage salary£/yrDC contribution% of salary
The annual pension deficit — cost per IoM worker, across three generations
PurposeThis tool exists to communicate how pension liability and value are distributed across generations on the Isle of Man — who accrues it, who funds it, and how that balance has shifted over time — not to produce a personal retirement forecast. Read every number as illustrating a pattern, not predicting your own outcome.Not financial adviceNothing on this page is financial, tax, or retirement planning advice. It does not account for your actual NI record, scheme membership, part-time working, career breaks, transfers, or commutation choices — the detail a real pension calculation requires. For decisions about your own retirement, use your pension provider's annual statement and speak to a licensed financial adviser.Methodology & sourcesAll figures in today's (2026) real money terms. Salary is user-editable per person (top bar for "you", per-card for the other two generations); defaults to £38k, the assumed IoM median — raise it to model a consultant, CEO, CFO or any other salary level.Civil service: GUS 2011 CARE scheme (1/57th accrual) from 2011; legacy final salary (1/60th accrual on your input salary) pre-2011. Total pensionable service across both eras is capped at 40 years (Income Tax (Retirement Benefit Schemes) Act 1978, the statute under which PSPA schemes are tax-exempt approved).State pension £263.55/week (April 2026 Manx rate); pro-rated by NI qualifying years (35 = full). NI fund: projected exhaustion 2046/47 (IoM Treasury); post-exhaustion state pension assumed 75% of entitlement, funded from general revenue.Private sector DC: 10% total contributions (5%+5%) on your input career salary (default £38k), 4% real return, 4% annuity rate.“% of median” and the Prior Pension Levy % are benchmarked against/calculated on each person's own figures (median fixed at £38k; levy % of their own input salary).Homemaker: 20 qualifying NI years assumed. Pension deficit: PSPA Annual Report 2024-25 actual (£48.1m); projections 6.5%/yr gross, 4%/yr contribution growth. Deficit per worker assumes 42,000 IoM workers.Known limitationsManx state pension is shown at the full rate for every card. In reality, IoM public-sector staff pension scheme members were contracted out of the State Second Pension (S2P/SERPS) for pre-2016 service, which reduces their actual state pension entitlement below the full rate shown here — this tool does not yet correct for that, so combined totals for civil service cards are somewhat overstated. Actual outcomes also depend on scheme reform, migration, and fiscal policy, none of which this model attempts to predict.AnalysisCoalfinch Observatory.