Useless with money.... time to change but not sure how...

MX5huggy

I’m not quite clear if you have children (you said you don’t have child care costs). But if you do you should aim to reduce your husband’s net income below £50k by contributions to pension therefore not only receiving the tax relief on the pension contributions but cutting the Child Benefit Tax charge so you get to keep all the child benefit. https://adviser.royallondon.com/technical-central/pensions/state-benefits-pension-manuals/child-benefit-avoiding-the-tax-charge/

Albermarle

partialycloudy said:

Oh and I do get pension statements.... but I get them from a few different companies... 

Depending exactly on what type of pensions they are , it is normally easy to consolidate them into a smaller number of pensions.
You might start by transferring the very smallest ones into one of the bigger ones .Most providers websites have lots of info on how to transfer pensions into them as they are quite keen for you to do it.

partialycloudy

MX5huggy said:

I’m not quite clear if you have children (you said you don’t have child care costs). But if you do you should aim to reduce your husband’s net income below £50k by contributions to pension therefore not only receiving the tax relief on the pension contributions but cutting the Child Benefit Tax charge so you get to keep all the child benefit. https://adviser.royallondon.com/technical-central/pensions/state-benefits-pension-manuals/child-benefit-avoiding-the-tax-charge/

Dont say that! We had to repay about £900 as we forgot to stop the benefit! 

I think we would have to pay quite a bit into his pension to bring his tax down... think he is on about £59000, and gets an annual bonus of over £5000. 

MX5huggy

partialycloudy said:

MX5huggy said:

I’m not quite clear if you have children (you said you don’t have child care costs). But if you do you should aim to reduce your husband’s net income below £50k by contributions to pension therefore not only receiving the tax relief on the pension contributions but cutting the Child Benefit Tax charge so you get to keep all the child benefit. https://adviser.royallondon.com/technical-central/pensions/state-benefits-pension-manuals/child-benefit-avoiding-the-tax-charge/

Dont say that! We had to repay about £900 as we forgot to stop the benefit! 

I think we would have to pay quite a bit into his pension to bring his tax down... think he is on about £59000, and gets an annual bonus of over £5000. 

You need to do some pension planning but when you start looking at the figures depending on what you’ve saved so far you might find 20% is a ball park you want to be putting into pension now which is just the right level to get that Child Benefit back in your pocket.