Pensions Planning: The NUMBER

LL_USS

QrizB said:

westv said:

What is "immersive reader" mode?

A setting in your browser.

In Firefox on Android it's an icon showing a rectangle with lines in (like a printed page) in the address bar.

Other browsers / OSs may vary.

I did not know about this. So useful tip to know thanks.

NickPoole

I don't know how interesting my pensions "planning" is but I have arrived at where I am almost accidently.

I was wandering along earning about £45K in my Civil Service job, so with a CS pension - this was in early 2023 so had about 26 years service in mixture of classic and alpha scheme (then just approaching 64 years of age).

Then I got promoted and apart from cranking up classic pension value it took me well into 40% tax territory. As didn't really need more than £3K or so a month i diverted everything over £50K into an AVC

Since then everything I've done has been based upon getting as much take home pay as poss without paying 40%.

This year I partially retired took most of the classic and all accrued alpha and putting that all into AVC - I calculate will be caught by the £60K annual allowance rules if I stay in work throughout 2026/27 but probably will fully retire that year especially if CS offer a redundancy package which might happen. Over retirement age that will be max 50% of FTE salary.

So what I'm aiming for, my "number" if you like, is when I retire to take as much income as i can without paying 40% tax. If I can retire on between £3k and £3.5K a month will be effectively living on same amount as while I was working! AVC will be a nice pot to draw on too. Obviously I'm over state retirement age (all that goes into the AVC port too)