How best to use my SIPP

hornetgirl

Part of my retirement planning was to use a SIPP to bridge the gap between stopping work and all my pensions becoming payable.
I have had a small DB pension since age 60, which I have supplemented with sporadic earnings and taking money from the SIPP. Next year I will get a further two small DB pensions and in July 2026 will get a full state pension.
There is currently about £77k in the SIPP, held in cash as the intention was for it to be used in the short term. However, I think it's very unlikely that I'll need more than £50k of it between now and SP.
Although it currently earns a bit of interest, I know that long term this isn't a good idea. I like the idea that it can sit there as a bit of a buffer, but no idea where it ought to be invested, so all suggestions welcome. No kids so no need for it to be an inheritance.

Brie

If you are still working presumably you're still contributing to a work scheme.  Is that one of the DB? or a DC??  If you do drawdown out of the SIPP there may be some limit on what you can contribute to your current scheme.  At least there was a few years back when I looked into something similar.  Someone will be along shortly, no doubt, who knows what's what!

What are your plans when you retire?  So many of us want to go on a trip of a life time so taking a chunk of the SIPP for that might be an idea.  

Can't help with the investment side of things, still trying to sort that out for myself with little success!!

tacpot12

If you are going to be left with about £27K in the SIPP, I think you should leave some of this as cash, just in case. I keep about £10K in my SIPP (I'm just a little younger than you, and have some DB pensions that will start to pay a few years before I reach my state pension age). 

How to invest the rest (£17K?) will depend on whether you want take small amounts out of your SIPP each year (in which case assets that pay a dividend or income would be better) or whether you just want to leave the investment to grow in value (in which case an accumulation asset type would be better). Other factors are your attitude to risk, and your view of your life expectancy.

In some respects, having assets that produce an income might be easier for someone picking up your affairs to manage (say in the event you had made a Power of Attorney and then lost capacity to manager your own financial affairs). They can just withdraw the money to use for your benefit as and when you need it, without having to take a decision about what to sell. 

Having assets that are a pool of underlying assets helps derisk your investment, and joining millions of others by buying into a very large pool might give further reassurance that you are not making a grave error. There are some very large funds available with long-track records. While past performance is no guarantee about the future, I always imagine that the fund managers must sweat a bit more if they realise that they are going to blow a 50 year track record...