Retirement Funds - advice and ideas welcome

PyggyMalony66

Hi Abermarle,

On Aviva there are three payments exactly as you say so it is relief at source.

it says I am paying in £63.61

tax relief is £15.90

Employer is paying £185.51

These numbers will change as I have just dropped from 4 day week to 3 day week (and no more unsociable hours).

On my payslip the £49 to Aviva was a deduction.

I will read back and digest all the answers I have received before taking any action but looks like I should:

Move some of my cash savings into the Aviva pension fund to get the tax relief.

Look at the Aviva investments and find a slightly riskier split than what I already have and then leave it there long enough to ride out any slumps.

Keep my ISA's chasing the best deals as they mature.

Buy a lottery ticket : )

I will see what SW comes back with about drawdown beyond age 75, and will also investigate annuities as I do have a chronic health condition (albeit well managed) that might push me into the better rates category.

When I do start the drawdown should I use savings first, then ISA's, then pensions?

Thank you all for your input - it's not the sort of thing you can discuss with close friends or even relatives is it. You have been most helpful.

Pyggy

Albermarle

Move some of my cash savings into the Aviva pension fund to get the tax relief.

Maybe it was already said, but just a reminder you can not add more to your pension gross ( means including tax relief) than your employment earnings. That includes your regular contributions and any one off ones. One thing you could do is ask Aviva to divert all new contributions to the growth fund.

When I do start the drawdown should I use savings first, then ISA's, then pensions?

There are no hard and fast rules. I suggest when you get to that stage you come back to the forum and open a new thread on the topic.

PyggyMalony66

Thanks Albermarle, and will definitely come back if I need to. Back to lurking for now : )

DRS1

The contribution figures look interesting - your employee contributions look like 3% gross (ie including the tax relief) and the employer contributions look like 9% 9% is more than the required minimum. 3% is less. I don't know how easy you would find it to increase the rate you contribute at but you probably should (utilising the non ISA savings if that leaves you short in your net pay).

Theoretically the most you could contribute in a month is 80% of £2041.50 (the taxable pay figure) but although you hear stories of people doing that I don't know how they manage - it does assume their savings are readily available and not held in fixed term accounts.

On the order of drawing some people would put pensions earlier (before ISAs). It depends on all sorts of things like age and tax rate but the thinking at one level is to see if you can draw from your pension before the state pension kicks in and uses up all your personal allowance. So if you have years where your taxable income is less than your personal allowance then would be a good time to draw enough from the taxable part of your pensions to use up the unused amount of personal allowance.