Should I have transferred out?

toolateforsums

I had a db pension that over the years had its early retirement benefits significantly reduced from when I joined the scheme. I wanted to retire at 55 and get away from a very stressful work/life balance. MY CETV offered was £630k versus a significant pension reduction at 55 of £14k pa. In addition i had AVC's of £72k and dc funds of £216k .

Around 3 1/2  years ago i found an IFA who was willing to analyse and positively recommend the transfer. It seemed to make sense compared with a very low pension of £14k +2.5k pa for the AVC's pa plus drawdown of remaining dc funds. I transferred out .

I began to access the funds at the age of 55. Since then there have been two significant world events, namely Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine/Russia conflict. Adds a bit of financial excitement!

My retirement needs are modest. No mortgage, nearly full sp at 67 , maximum income pa to live comfortably is around £30k , which allows for holidays/running car and plenty of entertainment thrown in.

Was i too hasty in transferring out , tempted by the large (to me) CETV relative to the annual pension , considering my retirement needs are quite modest?

Universidad

Why worry now, it's done.

Even if you were going to be financially worse off as a result of the transfer, you got something you wanted very much out of it at the time, which is not for nothing. And sounds like the transfer value you got was pretty good.

DB pensions offer a lot of security, that's a large part of their hidden value. It makes sense that's the thing you'd be most likely to miss.

As to whether you're better off financially one way or another, you probably won't know until you die, and it won't matter much then, either.

eskbanker

toolateforsums said:

Was i too hasty in transferring out

Your username answers that!

SouthCoastBoy

Only you can really answer the question. Seems like you have a pot of around 900k? If so withdrawing 3% per annum will give you 27k and with the state pension to come you should hit your figure of 30k pa, but key to continued success is your pot beating inflation. If it was me I would still be working to add an additional safety net, but that's me, everyone needs their own strategy

dunstonh

Was i too hasty in transferring out , tempted by the large (to me) CETV relative to the annual pension , considering my retirement needs are quite modest?

What has changed since you did it?

The investments and what can and will happen with them hasn't changed.  2022 was a negative year but negative years would have been expected.     There will be many negative years to come and a good number will be worse than 2022.   A repeat of 2000-2002 with 3 negative years in a row for example.   You must have known investments go down as well as up. So, when they go down, it is just confirming what you already knew would happen.  So, why worry about it?

Albermarle

 It seemed to make sense compared with a very low pension of £14k 

Many people would consider a guaranteed income from age 55 of over £1k per month, quite a reasonable sum.

Your CETV transfer of £630K, should be able to provide a pretty safe income of around £18Kpa from age 55. So about one third more than you would have been getting. However that is not 100% guaranteed income and is dependent on the pot being sensibly invested.

Sunnylifeover50plan

You haven't mentioned how you chose to invest post transfer or any associated one off or repeated costs. You perhaps have an opportunity to provide more information on the here and now but you will have to lift the bonnet a little more.

Pablootes

You can now get an rpi linked annuity at 55 paying about 3%. Assuming most of your pot is left it looks like you can pretty much achieve your target income.