Breaking Through, Travelling On

Karmacat · 19 June 2017 at 1:52PM

Uh oh. And here we see the wisdom of submitting regular meter readings online. I'm very frugal in my energy use, and I wasn't even here for about 5 weeks during the winter, because of my mum ... so I just submitted meter readings now and the page says: "Your reading doesn't match our estimate for the energy you've used. If we need any more information to process your reading, we'll email shortly"

Drat! Must pay more attention ....

Suffolk_lass · 19 June 2017 at 6:14PM

Karmacat wrote: »

- Friends Life are merging with Aviva in full, and thats going to take me well over the "small pension" level of £30k. I don't know what the implications are of that, but I know there are *some*. October? I'd better get my act together ...

Re your £30,000 issue - I understand that if your personal pension pot exceeds £30,000 you are obliged to use an IFA before you are allowed to drawdown the pot as capital. You can take up to 25% free of tax if you are over 55.

It might be worth calling them if that is your intention, to expedite it before the merger date. Looking at the pensions board there is about a £3000 fee to pay many and it has to be one that is qualified to advise in this particular area. So it might be worth your while avoiding this.

In addition, because you are earning very little so far this financial year, you might want to take some of the rest of it, that is liable to tax, because you still have your £11,500 total to play within. This is what we were hoping to do with my husband's private pension, drawing it over three years when his occupational pension is only approximately £7k pa to minimise the tax we pay in drawing it down. Of course now we are hoping to move that may need to be revisited.

beanielou · 19 June 2017 at 6:32PM

With you on the no ironing

I dont live is squalar but cleaning is so not top of my agenda.

gallygirl · 19 June 2017 at 10:54PM

Suffolk_lass wrote: »

Re your £30,000 issue - I understand that if your personal pension pot exceeds £30,000 you are obliged to use an IFA before you are allowed to drawdown the pot as capital. You can take up to 25% free of tax if you are over 55.

It might be worth calling them if that is your intention, to expedite it before the merger date. Looking at the pensions board there is about a £3000 fee to pay many and it has to be one that is qualified to advise in this particular area. So it might be worth your while avoiding this.

In addition, because you are earning very little so far this financial year, you might want to take some of the rest of it, that is liable to tax, because you still have your £11,500 total to play within. This is what we were hoping to do with my husband's private pension, drawing it over three years when his occupational pension is only approximately £7k pa to minimise the tax we pay in drawing it down. Of course now we are hoping to move that may need to be revisited.

I accessed my lump sum on a pot worth more than 30k last year. From memory, I had to sign a disclaimer, but no IFA involved at any stage.

Karmacat · 20 June 2017 at 9:06AM

Thanks for the input - I definitely need to get my head around it, and soon. It suits me to withdraw some anyway, as I wanted to pull some dosh away from stocks and shares.

Today ... I've been up for ages already, I'm in need of Second Breakfast quite soon

I've backed up the computer, and cleaned/disinfected a kitchen drawer I hadn't got round to. A bit more tut is scheduled to meet its doom/charity shop.

Just checked the to-do list on my phone, its:
- derisking pension money from stocks and shares.
- dehydrate rosemary and lady's mantle.
- lightly cook rhubarb
- bit of weeding (pulling up overgrown lady's mantle!)
- antkiller all round the outside of the house.

I can't go out for long in this weather, so any time left over will be something low-key like finishing off the evacuee letters. Or a bit more cleaning, sigh ...

Karmacat · 20 June 2017 at 9:28AM

Just had a bit of a win! The fan on my laptop is slowly dying, so I brought my freestanding electric fan downstairs to keep it cool while I did the computer backups. It didn't turn on! I resorted to lifting the laptop up off the table by resting it on a pair of wooden spoons

and fanned it every now and then with a big book (it switched itself off twice yesterday in the middle of the first attempt at backup, so its quite an issue).

So, there was me thinking I was going to at the least have to change the fuse on the freestanding electric fan, and maybe buy a new one ... and I realised that the cutout switch on the adapter at the mains wasn't switched on :rotfl: switched it on, and now the fan is helping my laptop and me at the same time

:j:j:j

Karmacat · 20 June 2017 at 11:15AM

Sorry in advance, tried to change the font size, it won't take.

Okay, the pensions thing. Notes from the government's website:
“You must get independent financial advice, by law, if you have a:

final salary or career average pension (known as a ‘defined benefit’ pension) worth more than £30,000 and you want to transfer it to a defined contribution pension scheme
defined contribution pension worth more than £30,000 with a guarantee about what you’ll be paid when you retire (eg a guaranteed annuity rate) and you want to give it up to do something else with your pot.”

They also have a page where you can find out what type of pension you have (so you know if you can book a free pensionwise appt, but anyway) ...
To do this, it simply asks if your pension was set up by your employer. Mine was not, so I answered no. The next screen says:

“From what you’ve told us you have a defined contribution pension
These are sometimes known as ‘money purchase’ pensions. The amount you get depends on how much was paid in and how well the investments have done.
You choose how to take money from your pension pot.
You can book a free Pension Wise appointment to talk about your options for taking your money.”

So, the government says I have defined contribution/money purchase pensions. And you have to have IFA advice if you have a defined contribution pension worth more than £30k with a guarantee about what you'll be paid when you retire.

I have no such guarantee.

Okay, thats the info I need to know when I ring Friends Life. I'm going to use it on here on the Pensions Board too - just putting it on this thread as my home base, sort of

Its a First World Problem, and all that, nice to have, but I'll be damned if I'm going to give away any more money, especially after they took 6 years of state pension from me (I agreed with the 5 to equalise with the men, but the 6th was taking the biscuit!).

Save

ZTD · 20 June 2017 at 8:34PM

Karmacat wrote: »

Just had a bit of a win! The fan on my laptop is slowly dying,

You can replace those you know. Just type the name of your laptop plus "fan" into ebay and see what it comes up with.

EatingTheElephant · 21 June 2017 at 7:23AM

Great news about the pension. That could very easily be misinterpreted, good job you checked!

Suffolk_lass · 21 June 2017 at 8:05AM

Karmacat wrote: »

Sorry in advance, tried to change the font size, it won't take.

Okay, the pensions thing. Notes from the government's website:
“You must get independent financial advice, by law, if you have a:

final salary or career average pension (known as a ‘defined benefit’ pension) worth more than £30,000 and you want to transfer it to a defined contribution pension scheme

defined contribution pension worth more than £30,000 with a guarantee about what you’ll be paid when you retire (eg a guaranteed annuity rate) and you want to give it up to do something else with your pot.”

They also have a page where you can find out what type of pension you have (so you know if you can book a free pensionwise appt, but anyway) ...
To do this, it simply asks if your pension was set up by your employer. Mine was not, so I answered no. The next screen says:

“From what you’ve told us you have a defined contribution pension
These are sometimes known as ‘money purchase’ pensions. The amount you get depends on how much was paid in and how well the investments have done.
You choose how to take money from your pension pot.
You can book a free Pension Wise appointment to talk about your options for taking your money.”

So, the government says I have defined contribution/money purchase pensions. And you have to have IFA advice if you have a defined contribution pension worth more than £30k with a guarantee about what you'll be paid when you retire.

I have no such guarantee.

Okay, thats the info I need to know when I ring Friends Life. I'm going to use it on here on the Pensions Board too - just putting it on this thread as my home base, sort of

Its a First World Problem, and all that, nice to have, but I'll be damned if I'm going to give away any more money, especially after they took 6 years of state pension from me (I agreed with the 5 to equalise with the men, but the 6th was taking the biscuit!).
Save

You have no idea how brilliant that clarification is for us. I am sorry if I misled you - I had not picked up on the guaranteed benefit part of the condition to use an IFA, where your fund is over £30k. :j

Breaking Through, Travelling On

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