Taking full pension pot at 55

mark55man

as jamesd says live and learn and I am grateful for the correction.  I hadn't based any plans on my mistake - and embarrassment is a small price to pay for knowledge - sorry OP for distracting your thread

stevericks

One more question, I have a pension in Aegon, that I stopped paying into 15 years ago, a pension in scottish widow, from years ago and my current work one with L&G.
Do I move them all to one pension to do the flexi draw down? Or do I take 25% from each and then move them into a flexi draw down account?

Thanks again,

Steve.

jamesd

Pensions opened before roughly 2000 might have a guaranteed annuity rate that is often high compared to current rates, so first check for a GAR. If none then it'll make life simpler to combine them.

mark55man

(Trying to redeem myself) - also can you be clear what type of pension it was.  Just because you were paying in, doesn't mean its a DC pot.  I shared a story recently about a colleague who had been paying into what turned out to be a DB scheme with a Guaranteed Minimum Payment (GMP) that was about £12Kpa instead of the £2K he had thought.  So be careful not to lose any rights to valuable promises from a more generous time

Albermarle

stevericks said:

One more question, I have a pension in Aegon, that I stopped paying into 15 years ago, a pension in scottish widow, from years ago and my current work one with L&G.
Do I move them all to one pension to do the flexi draw down? Or do I take 25% from each and then move them into a flexi draw down account?

Thanks again,

Steve.

To add to the other comments . In theory you can operate flexi drawdown with each of them separately . However an older pension might not actually offer the option of flexi drawdown , so you would have to transfer it anyway to one that did .
Also I think generally it simplifies things like tax codes, if you limit drawdown to one pension.
An alternative is to have flexi drawdown with one pension, and just keep the others ticking over and transfer them over when you need the funds.