**Utterly, completely, totally lost. HMRC rules help appreciated!**

patanne

As your pension provision seems to be small and women still seem to have a longer life expectancy it would seem that you will be a little challenged if your OH pre-deceases you. As has been already said you can defer your state pension even though you are already taking it. If at all possible you should defer for as long as you can afford to. Otherwise what are you going to live on? Perhaps it is time to look after your own interests.

atush

So your husbands other 3 pensions have no widows benefit either? that is harsh.

You really need to defer your SP and also start a pension for yourself.

Also, if your house has no mtg, but you can't afford to run it should yoru OH shuffle off his mortal coil, then look at downsizing to a cheaper to run property. I dont like the imbalance of your long term income situation. any funds released should be invested in your name in a spread of different assets and wrappers.

hybernia

In GREAT haste, so apologies for both the brevity and belated nature of this post -- we actually have friends visiting today for an overnight stop en route to another destination, so I've just begged off to grab a little time here as there's nothing worse than seeking help from others and then simply vanishing.

The amount of help I've received here is very, very much appreciated: tapping into the experience and expertise of others is like picking up nuggets of knowledge mined by them at the expense of their time and their toil. For which reason, then, thanks are always going to be just a bit inadequate.

Nevertheless, BIG thanks to kidmugsy, Triumph13, xylophone, atush, mgdavid, jamesd, and patanne for taking the trouble to help as they have done here. As will by now be very apparent, neither I nor hubbie had a clue about pensions -- yet now we do, because not merely has advice been offered here but explanations and clarifications, all of them penned to assist ignoramusses like us to discover options (for example, pension deferral) and opportunities that could never have occurred to us.

I have printed out this entire thread; hubbie and I are going to sit down tomorrow morning, after our guests have gone, to debate and discuss because there's much here on which to ponder and from which to plan.

Simply put: I can't thank you all enough. Best wishes to you and yours from a very grateful pair of oldies (well, all right: surely not that old . . .)

:beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer:

xylophone

a very grateful pair of oldies (well, all right: surely not that old . . .)

"You're as old as you feel," as my dear grannie used to say....but that could be amended to "as old as your offspring have made you feel.......":)

mgdavid

...or if you're an old-school unreconstructed chauvinist, you're only as old as the woman you feel...