Early retirement. Longer enjoyment.

Thinking about retiring early, but without financial worries? That takes good planning! This is because in many retirement provision plans, there will be deductions for every month you retire early – this also applies to your state pension as well as three of the other Mars pension schemes. What’s different about the Bridging Plan ? Unlike other pension plans, you don’t build up pension rights, but instead capital. And you can have this capital paid to you without deductions to bridge the time between entering early retirement and payout of your state pension.

 

Five things you should know about the Bridging Plan

 

1. Purpose of the Bridging Plan

The Bridging Plan is a good idea for anyone planning to retire early. You build a buffer for the time between early retirement and the start of your regular pension payments (that means for the time between age 60 and 63). You can have it paid out without deductions.

2. Favorable tax terms – deductions from your gross salary.

Your contributions are deducted directly from your gross income. They are also tax-free, and up to a certain limit, also exempt from all social security contributions. This also means: you save on taxes and social security contributions today. The result? You are paying in much less than is actually deposited into your retirement plan!

3. Contributions with leeway. 

You decide how much exactly you want to pay in!  Overall, you can deposit up to 20% of your regular monthly gross income in the three schemes together (Compensation Plan, Bridging Plan, Supplementary Plan).

4. Flexibility – choose your own contributions.

You decide not only how much but also what you want to contribute! Because the Bridging Plan not only takes cash. You can also make contributions from accrued annual leave and the associate savings scheme to boost up your retirement pension

5. Tailored participation.

The participation agreement is valid as of September of any year and entered into for a period of 12 months until revocation. This way, you are flexible and can check regularly if you want to change your contributions in the period from 1 June to 5 September of any year. Please remember to enter your changes in the Pension Portal before this time window closes. Our Mars service: We will remind you of this on time, so you can adjust your decision if you wish.