Retirement Saving

jamesd

It's also worth considering that your personal contributions are only limited by your gross pay (annual allowance too high to matter for you) so you could move savings into additional pension contributions and that's probably a good move. Once you reach 55 you could take 25% of a personal pension as a tax free lump sum with no adverse consequences and leave the rest invested in a flexi-access drawdown account for later. If you were to withdraw anything from the flexi-access drawdown account, or used UFPLS for a lump sum, you'd trigger the 4k a year cap on personal pension contributions (defined benefit average or final salary still get to use the rest of the 40k annual allowance)

You can even take a maximum of £7,500 in tax free lump sum every rolling twelve months (not calendar or tax year) and recycle that into more pension contributions for a second bite at the tax relief.

If it's a choice between your or your husband making pension contributions we'd need to know a fair bit more about his circumstances. If he's a higher rate tax payer and able to use salary sacrifice for personal pension contributions that pretty much decides it as him best unless the pension lifetime allowance is a factor.