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Pensions Planning: The NUMBER
The NUMBER is how much income you need to "live comfortably" So What's your number? Very important for pensions planning, to know what you are aiming for. My Number? (for a couple) I calculated: £22,000 based on Food £5,000 Car/transport £5,000 Bills/Utilities £4,500 Holidays/Leisure £4,500 Clothing/Cash/Xmas/Other £2,000…
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Success Stories - Pensions
This is a bit of a light topic where the idea is to highlight what successes you had with your pension pots. Example - I contributed X and accumulated Y by Z year. Total appreciation was 'x' percent. Just trying to learn the following that could inspire a range of people - those with no pension, those who started late etc.…
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Acronyms etc..
Hello to all. As a fairly new forum user I would appreciate someone posting a key to the acronyms and arcane terms used when discussing pension issues. Thank you in advance.
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Pensions, Annuities & Retirement Planning Sticky
Welcome to the new Pensions, Annuities and Retirement Planning sticky! 👋 📖 Here are some Forum threads you may find useful (if there are any you think have been missed, please do let us know): * Can I cash in my pension? * Early-retirement wannabe * It's time to start digging up those Squirrelled Nuts!!!! 📝 And here's some…
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Class 2 not offered although fulfil the criteria ??
I have lived and worked abroad from end 2000 to current year with two periods of unemployment. Prior to moving, I worked in the UK for 13 years and up to 6 weeks before my move to France (because of searching for a place to live in France and organising house sale and removal in the UK). I sent my CF83 beginning March 2025…
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Transferring Royal London plan to II SIPP
I have a Royal London plan through a past employer that's sat with RL since I left. I've confirmed as best I can this is actually just a RL personal pension but via a group discount so around 0.35% all-in. Main thing is it doesn't have a protected access age and it doesn't have any safeguarded benefits. I can't think of…
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Continue contributing to pension or something else?
My combined DC pensions have recently exceeded £1m. I have 5 years left before I can start drawdown. My wife and I run a small limited company (no employees, just us) and make employer contributions monthly to both our pensions as well as a lump sum towards the company year end. My wifes DC pension is currently at around…
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Taking flexible retirement from a LGPS while still working
Hi there, hoping to get some advice on behalf of my partner
who is a member of the West Yorkshire Pension Fund (Local Government Pension
Scheme). She’s 55 and has recently been looking to reduce her hours
from five days a week to four. When she requested this from the HR department,
she was offered the option of taking…
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Providers that preserve protected pension age on transfer in?
Hi all, I'm about 3 years away from retiring and I've discovered that my main DC pension with Aviva (a TK policy) doesn't provide FAD. I'd need to contact them every time I want to make a withdrawal apparently. However, it does provide a protected pension age of 55 which will be really useful. Aviva's fees aren't super…
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Sanity check
I would be grateful if someone could please check my cunning plan for pension withdrawal possibilities prior to my appt with Vanguard? I have topped up state pension to max and will start that in 2029 I am 64 and have circa £200K in Vanguard sipp and £55K in with profits with old CGU, now with Aviva. Aviva have confirmed…
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Taxed on SP due to late husbands SP
I receive the new SP and approx £7 per week of my late husband pension and do not pay tax, I do have a draw down private pension but not taking it and haven’t used my full 25% tax allowance yet. Today’s I’ve received a new tax code K35 which if I’m reading it correctly it says I’m due to pay tax on £362 in 26/27 which…
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Scheme specific protected tax free cash questions
Hi, first time poster, long term lurker, so please be gentle. I have a ring fenced Scottish Widows, protected tax free Retirement Acc pension, of which I was told several years ago by SW that the tax free portion was 34. something %. Its current value is £173000. As this is ring fenced, no contributions are made, just…
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The Pensions cashback and incentives discussion thread
Lots of coverage on incentives for current account switching, but none that I've seen for pensions. I kind of get it - bank accounts are a well oiled process, don't involve long waits, differing paperwork requirements, and potentially large sums needing to move. But given that the demographic of this board is made up of a…
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State Pension taxable
I have just received 2 letters from DWP, 1 showing how much my State Pension will be from April 2026 and 2. what my tax code will be. They have stated that my State Pension will be ABOVE the personal allowance and therefore £58 of it will be taxed along with my private pension. Has anyone else had this? I understood that…
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Avoiding triggering MPAA
My wife is considering taking about £4000 per year - but on a monthly basis. The MPAA rule I think we want to utilise is: Small Pots (Under £10,000): You can take up to three "small pots" of £10,000 or less (from non-occupational/SIPP schemes) in their entirety without triggering the MPAA. Does this mean she should take…
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Taxable state pension query
My mum is 80 and living only on her state pension which is a little higher since my dad passed away last year and is now around £1200 but she doesn’t have any other income. We’ve just had a tax bill for £600 . She wasn’t made aware she needed to pay tax on her state pension so this is quite a shock. I am going to call them…
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Bold leap into retirement
Morning all, I hope you have managed to find some time for yourself in what can be a busy period. We have enjoyed spending time with family over the last 3 days, it’s a quiet one today, then off to visit more family tomorrow. I’m not planning anything wild for NYE, but have been really starting to think about what I want…
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What's the lowest income that still permits me to pay class 2 NI?
Background… I'm retired, age 60 but 2 years NI contributions short of full state pension. I've been asked to do a small amount of self employed work that will earn me around £1k for a couple of years. I was thinking of using the opportunity to get 2 years contributions with voluntary class 2 NI. I've not been self employed…
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State Pension - amount
I still don't know whether I will receive a Full SP in 4 years (I am 63 next birthday) With 33 years Contracted out credits- with another 7 years ESA paid class 1 credits by 2030 !! According to Chat GPT "Maximum new State Pension 2026/27 maximum: £230.30 per week For someone who was contracted out for all their working…
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Exercising Share Options and Relevant UK Earnings for Pension Tax Relief
Slightly niche question. When you exercise non tax-advantaged share options from a current or former UK employer, the difference between exercise price and value on day of exercise is subject to UK income tax and NI at the prevailing rate (any further gains, if you don't sell, being subject to CGT). My question - is this…
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pension minefield.
I am employed by the NHS and contribute to their pension scheme via my wages. I have a pension from a previous employer and applied to transfer it into my NHS pension. I was informed that this was not possible because the NHS scheme only allows a certain amount of time to do this and I was out of time. Would it be possible…
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Civil Service Pension Switching
Hi, After reading through many posts I figured I would post my own question rather than trying to find answers in other's situations that might be similar. I am currently 47 years old and have been employed in the Civil Service for 9 years. When I joined, I had previously been part of a Stakeholder Pension with a previous…
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Are my pensions going to be enough?
I'm 50 Top photo is from a place i worked at for ten months Bottom photo shows my Aviva private pension; pay £120/month into it. Payslip shows my current payments to a workbased pension, can I ask them to increase this? How much am I getting off it? Any good? How do these compare with police/pcso/nurse pensions I heard if…
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Civil Service Pension & Tax
I was retired from the Civil Service on the grounds of ill health in 2013 (I was in the Classic Scheme). Due to circumstances, I didn’t claim it at the time; I am now looking at doing so. My annual pension will be 12k. MyCSP have confirmed that it will be back-dated (ie 12k x 12 years = £144000). What I was hoping to do…
Got questions about boosting your state pension by checking your record with the Future Pension Centre and making voluntary National Insurance contributions?
734 discussions
6.4K comments
Most recent: Paid gaps in N.I a year ago, still not updated. by Bighitter32
6 February at 11:02PM
