pension at 50

hopeless_case_2

Hi all my hubby is 50 in march this year andhe has a small pension he could take now what to do we do not know.
Here are the figures
Pension fund now is £23,435
Pension fund in 2018 projected at 40,455

have not got the yearly pension amount to be paid yet but in 2018 is£1170.00.
Should we wait or take it now?

we could do with the cash as badly need some work done on the house.
I should mention we do get a pension already of £670 per month after tax.(due to ill health).
Any advice welcome!

hopeless_case_2

Thanks for all the advice. lol!

dunstonh

Your request was too specific. There was no way to tell from that data what the best option was for you.

hopeless_case_2

well i think i may have it sussed. We can take the 25% tax free lump sum then invest the remainder and do not have to take the income straight away we can leave it in to grow. Will decide for myself though wont be going to any independant financial advisors (no offence meant ) as we lost alot of money years ago by investing with them.

chesky369

will he have to pay an annual charge if he takes early retirement - it can be around 4% per annum.

dunstonh

We can take the 25% tax free lump sum then invest the remainder and do not have to take the income straight away we can leave it in to grow. Will decide for myself though wont be going to any independant financial advisors (no offence meant ) as we lost alot of money years ago by investing with them.

Sorry. That made me laugh. You are going to invest the remainder but werent happy that you lost money in the past. You blame the IFA but think that doing it yourself will mean that you will avoid losses. IFAs cannot buck market trends. We are not some magical entity that can make investments grow when everthing is going down. If you think you can achieve that then you are sadly mistaken.

If the markets you are invested in go down, then your value will go down. The skill of an adviser (or an experienced investor) is to limit the losses and exceed the growth.

In the early part of this decade losses of upto 45% were typical for a short period. If you withdrew your money no long after those losses then you would have lost money. If you had stayed put then you would have gone on to benefit from 5 years of double digit returns where your money could have doubled. This is why investing is for the long term. Not until you see a bit of loss.

Perhaps your issues are not with the IFA but with your own risk profile not being suitable to use investments?

hopeless_case_2

HaHa Ha no i know exactly what you are saying. I think you either missed my point or i did not explain myself clearly. Like everything in life you get good and bad eg people who are good at teaching people who are not. Also i am alot older wiser and more knowlegable of life money etc. We were it turns out badly advised. Back in 1995 we got £60,000 not a great amount but with no income coming in exept incapacity benefit. We got and ifa in to help us I now know we should have paid off our mortgage but he said we were better off investing and taking an income which was never enough but like i say we were young. There again he would have made no money from us if we had paid our mortgage off would he? So there you go i will read up about all the different products on the market and as i believe we have to put the funds somewhere we cannot just cash them in and pay them off the mortgage(or believe me i would).Then i will decide what to do without someone making a hefty profit from me for not such good advice. As i said no offence to yourself but i am very very wary!

cyclonebri1

Hi, this is just a general reply to HC.

I've been loitering around here for only a month or two now, and faced with the change of working all the hrs God sent to being a little less able, I had a fair few questions.

I have no answer to your direct query, but I came on here with the attitude to ask as many people for as much indirect advise as I could think of. Scatter gun aproach if you like. If someone states something that is clearly innaccurate it's not long before it's corrected.

When you have all that info to hand you can then make your own decisions and if things go well...:T and if they don't,:mad: only oneself to blame.

I'd sooner have it that way, my initial gut feeling with "my" IFA was not favourable.

hopeless_case_2

i am with you on that and i will gather as much info as i possibly can.

EdInvestor

hopeless_case wrote: »

Should we wait or take it now?

we could do with the cash as badly need some work done on the house.
I should mention we do get a pension already of £670 per month after tax.(due to ill health).
Any advice welcome!

The idea you have of taking the 25% tax free cash now and leaving the rest to grow sounds like the way to go.To do this you will need to move the money to a SIPP, such as the ones run by www.h-l.co.uk or www.sippdeal.co.uk. Then you put the fund into "income drawdwon" - at which point 25% cash is paid out and the rest invested.In your case you take no income at present, but can choose to activate the income option (max is 120% of the annuity rate for your age)at any time.

There is no need to use an IFA to set up a SIPP with the discount providers mentioned above, who will talk you through the process and have low setup fees.

Be aware that from 2010 the minumum age for doing this goes up to 55, it may be wise to move now.

hopeless_case_2

thanks for that will probs do that as like i say we could do with the lump sum now,but not desperate for the small income anyrate it is going to take the pru 7-10 working days to get any info to me. Can you believe that!