(edit title) Swedish Pension System Questions on how it works? Options

[John.Smith]

I think that you will need to actually work out on paper the financials for them taking into consideration comparison of salaries and cost of living and pension etc...
Coming from the Uk they will get little or no government help here and if the husband does not have a job to walk into then they will be penniless....

How the hell did he rack up 450k in CSN loans for a distance course???

[John.Smith]

Here is a thread started a few months ago with respect to combining pensions from other Eu countries etc,... may give some additional insight.

http://www.thelocal.se/discuss/index.php?s...lator&st=15

[Essingen]

Can you please elaborate on what you wrote..Don't forget that in the UK, people on low incomes are almost taken out of tax with high levels of personal allowances ?

What are the high levels of personal allowances in the UK?

You will find the information here.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/personal-allow.htm

[explore3788]

Thank you all for your input, I will try to present all this to the couple.It is not just me that thinks that this would be financially unsound move at this point in their lives!!

John Smith, that was my question too. The Swedish husband (not a very wise man) must have taken out the CSN max allowed for overseas education. 45K sterling (approx 450K SEK) an online "dsitance" degree teaching degree, not even one from a recognised Swedish University!! I also suspect he used the CSN monies to finance their UK life. The wife gave the excuse that they are returning to Sweden to pay back the CSN debt, my answer to her was that you can pay your CSN debt anywhere in the world if you have bank transfer:-)

[John.Smith]

My wife paid hers (CSN) when we lived in the UK. They will send the invoice to where ever your registered address is in the world.

I think they would be very silly to make the move given their limited finances.

[snarky]

@Explore - sometimes you can only do so much for people and then you have to throw up your hands....cheers to you for trying though.

[Timbosaurus]

If they decided to move to Sweden, they could keep paying their British NI stamps from there, which would allow them the new guaranteed minimum state pension of £144/wk each upon reaching statutory retirement age. You only need 30 years to get this, rather than the 40 in Sweden. You can get a statement of how many years 'stamps' you already have online.

More info here: https://www.gov.uk/voluntary-national-insur...y-contributions

The rates are extremely low. Currently £2.62 per week for voluntary overseas contributions.