old pension

weblands

Hello everyone, new user and first post.
could anyone help?
I work for a major PLC and joined before they had an in house pension, therefore I opted to pay into the scottish widdows scheme the company was affliated to. Then in 96 the company started thier own fund which i now pay into.
Scottish widdows sent me a statement recently saying I had £1429 in my fund which will give me approx £86 a year when i reach 65 (now 38) wow big deal by then that may buy me half a pint of mild!!
I phoned scottish widdows to see if i could access that money now, even with a penalty and they said no, the only way would be to transfer the money to a new fund. So i called my company pension dept and they said no they wouldn't accept it. I then considered paying extra funds into the SW pension but i think its "closed".
so the question is ,what can i do with this £1429 if i can't access it?
Any suggstions - i would like it now to spend on new bike leathers!!
Thanks

jem16

You cannot access any pension until you are at least 55. At that point you can take 25% tax-free cash and buy an annuity with the rest.

At the moment your choices are to transfer it to someweher else or simply leave it where it is to grow. Why is it closed?

dunstonh

Scot Widows have issued different versions over the years and have inherited a number of plans from takeovers and mergers (such as Black Horse Life and TSB Life). They have also issued LTSB versions and whole of market versions as well as their own website version. Many of the legacy versions cannot be incremented.

However, that doesnt stop it being moved into a modern plan although Scot Wid have moved most of their legacy plans without guaranteed annuity rates to a 1% stakeholder equivalent charge.

If you want to increase your retirement provision, then you could transfer the pension into a new open plan and pay into that.