Retirement: are there terms that are worth more than others?

When are you eligible to retire for a full pension? Are you entitled to a premium? Or is your pension, conversely, subject to a discount? The answers to all of these questions very much depend on how many quarters you can justify.

But some quarters are taken into account in one calculation rather than another, and vice versa. In order to be clear about your situation, you can perform a simulation of the potential amount of your retirement at different ages from your personalized space “My Retirement Account”.

The formula used to calculate the amount of your retirement pension has 3 main elements, according to the Assurance Retraite website. Your average annual income, the rate of payment of your pension and finally your duration of contribution to the insurance of the general scheme divided by the maximum duration of insurance taken into account according to your year of birth.

The calculation rate of your retirement can vary between 37.5% and 50%, the latter being considered as a full rate. If you stop your professional activity at the age of 62 and can justify a sufficient number of quarters, you will be entitled to a full calculation rate. This will also be the case if you continue to work until the age of the automatic maximum rate, which is between 65 and 67 years old. If you do not meet the necessary conditions, your pension will be calculated with a rate lower than 50%, which is called a “discounted” pension. But how is the average annual income calculated?

Your average annual income will be calculated on the basis of the 25 best annual incomes of your career, subject to coefficients. However, not all periods of your professional activity are taken into account in this calculation.

These periods not counted correspond to the years for which your income does not validate quarters, to the years with certain redemptions and finally to the last year of work before retirement. If taking that year into account would be potentially particularly interesting for you, it may be strategic to postpone his departure to the following January 1…

The third and final element taken into account in the calculation is the duration of the insurance. How is it calculated?

This duration is expressed in quarters. It is possible to validate up to 4 quarters for each calendar year. The number of quarters needed to receive a full pension, in addition to the 50% rate, will depend on your year of birth. This quantity therefore varies between 150 and 172 quarters depending on the age of future retirees.

This variant in the calculation means that, even if you benefit from the full rate, you will not receive a full pension if you have not accumulated enough quarters of insurance. The periods that can be validated as a quarter are as follows: the periods of paid activity, the periods assimilated to insurance periods such as maternity or sick leave, the periods validated by presumption and finally the periods bought back for the rate and the duration of insurance.

However, certain situations will allow you to validate additional terms…

If you are, or have found yourself in one of the following situations, you will be able to validate a few additional terms. If you have had or raised a child, if you have taken parental leave, if you have raised a disabled child, if you are retiring between the ages of 65 and 67, or if you have assumed the permanent care of an adult disabled in your family.

You will see these additional quarters reported on your career statement when you leave. Conversely, the quarters of schemes other than the general scheme, the quarters allocated to the spouses of craftsmen or traders and the quarters linked to arduous work are periods which are taken into account for the opening of your rights to the pension, but not for the calculation of your pension.