Need Pension Advice Please

RichandJ

jacton wrote: »

Many thanks again. My £14500 annual pension actually started in 2008.

Basically my pension payments for this year are as follows:-

HM Gov Pension £14500
TSB Private £ 280
Barnet Pension £ 86

Making a total annual pension of £14866

If my annual life time allowance is £18000 surely instead of £86 annually this could be converted into a lump sum as long as added to my two other annual pensions the total was less than the £18000.

I think this is all above my head. It must have taken you all your career to understand it all

Have to go & get one of those train things now. I'll try & explain it a bit more tomorrow, if no-one else has done by then.

dunstonh

Just one more question, is the life time allowance an annual allowance or a one off.

The lifetime allowance is a life time allowance. The annual allowance is an annual allowance.

jacton

So once I exceed my 1% of life time allowance that's it. I am confused. If my Annual pension is £14500 and my life time allowance is £18000 I cannot receive more in a pension than that total.

Sorry its as clear as mud. I am trying to find out if my measly £86 per year can be converted into a lump sum payment. This has nothing to do with my private occupational pensions that have been in place since 2008 or does it?

Annisele

jacton wrote: »

So once I exceed my 1% of life time allowance that's it. I am confused. If my Annual pension is £14500 and my life time allowance is £18000 I cannot receive more in a pension than that total.

Sorry its as clear as mud. I am trying to find out if my measly £86 per year can be converted into a lump sum payment. This has nothing to do with my private occupational pensions that have been in place since 2008 or does it?

Sorry, 'fraid you've got the wrong end of the stick.

The lifetime allowance is £1,800,000, not £18,000. (It is possible to have more than £1.8mil in a pension, but you'll get whacked with a tax charge).

You can only cash in a pension under triviality if your total pension pot is less than 1% of the lifetime allowance. So, when Barnet council (or whoever it is) decides whether you're allowed to use the triviality rules, it has to look at all of your pensions, including your occupational ones, to see whether the total value of your pot is more or less than £18,000. In your case, you're well and truly over.

Does that help?

(This whole lifetime allowance thing was brought in as part of "pension simplification". You'll probably understand why some people refer to the whole thing as "pension complification" instead).

jacton

Yes Many thanks, oh well I'll have the Max lump sum and my £86 per year, i have asked for it to be paid annually as it will cost the tax payer (me included) more to pay it to me monthly.

You are certainly correct to say it is pension complification rather than simplification. Its no wonder nobody is really interested in working out their future when then cannot even understand the present.

It the Government are really serious about the next generations and their pensions they really need to make it understandable to everybody and not just the number crunchers,

Many thanks to you and everybody else who has contributed, you have all helped so much more than several weeks of communication with Barnet Pension administrators. Why can't they put information in simple layman's terms.

Once again many thanks to everybody

sa_06

jacton wrote: »

It the Government are really serious about the next generations and their pensions they really need to make it understandable to everybody and not just the number crunchers,

I'm with you on that - it's so, so difficult for even half-interested people to get to grips with some of this stuff, and school is no preparation for being even half clued up about finance (at least mine wasn't) - but at least we have things like MSE to discuss this stuff easily these days - not something that previous generations have been blessed with :T:D