Pension question

Pobby

My wife and I have a mish mash of pots. 2 old company pensions, one with the Pru, one with Fijitsu, a frozen Barclays, a current Barclays, a current Scottish Widows, and finally 2 pension pots that we had to make paid up due to a change in circumstances with what was Allied Crowbar.

We have 5 years to go before encashing and I wondered, with the stock market being so low at the moment, what would have happened if we we had to draw our pensions right now during a crash?

EdInvestor

Pobby wrote: »

We have 5 years to go before encashing and I wondered, with the stock market being so low at the moment, what would have happened if we we had to draw our pensions right now during a crash?

There is no requirement to draw a pension at any given date, so you could just defer until things improve, or put the pensions into income drawdown .

Pensions have got a lot more flexible in recent years.

oldandgrumpy

Loosely under the title of this thread, I have another pension question, Edinvestor. You helped me before, perhaps I may prevail again.
My wife has 8 years hrp, and 26 years q.y's.
Under the (very ) new proposals, will she be able to buy the missing 5 years at £420 each, despite already having bought years back to 96/97 under the previous system?

EdInvestor

oldandgrumpy wrote: »

Loosely under the title of this thread, I have another pension question, Edinvestor. You helped me before, perhaps I may prevail again.
My wife has 8 years hrp, and 26 years q.y's.
Under the (very ) new proposals, will she be able to buy the missing 5 years at £420 each, despite already having bought years back to 96/97 under the previous system?

The qualifications are already having 20 qys and retiring between 2008 and 2015, so looks OK. The price may not remain the same however.

McKneff

another loose question please
how much does the £420 per lost year add on to a pension

oldandgrumpy

Full term, 1/39th of full pension per week, I think, but Edinvestor can give better info.

TMFTP

Pobby wrote: »

We have 5 years to go before encashing and I wondered, with the stock market being so low at the moment, what would have happened if we we had to draw our pensions right now during a crash?

Bear in mind there are 2 things going on just now - 1 is the FTSE dropping, which will impact any of your pension funds invested in Equities. The other is that annuity rates are currently quite high (generally investment returns come from a blend of gilts / corporate bonds / equities - the corporate bonds are returning high value due to the difficulty companies are having finding money to borrow).

If you leave it longer term, you may find your pension pot goes up, but annuity rates come down. Or you may not have any funds invested in equities, or you may not wish to take an annuity with your pension. You need an IFA to sit with you and work out what route best suits your needs.

Pobby

Yes I am being thick here. Always panic about market crashes as I always think that my pension is invested in equities. Doing the sums I might well be able to defer my pension for a further 5 years so giving another 10 years to go. It`s going to depend on further savings/ investments over the next five years.