Retirement and pension advice

Working out whether you can afford to stop

Most people arrive with a pension statement and no real sense of what it means. A pot of £400,000 sounds substantial until you ask what income it produces, for how long, and what happens if you live to ninety.

So we work backwards. We start with the life you actually want rather than a percentage of your final salary, put a number on it, then test whether what you have gets you there. That test matters more than the plan, because it tells you whether the problem is real and how much room you have.

What we look at

• Everything you hold, in one place. Old workplace schemes, personal pensions, ISAs and anything your partner holds. Most people have more pots than they remember.
• Whether consolidating helps or hurts. Sometimes it simplifies and reduces cost. Sometimes it destroys guarantees that are worth keeping. It depends entirely on what the older schemes contain.
• Defined benefit pensions. If you hold one, the default position is usually to keep it. Transferring out is rarely in someone's interest and is heavily restricted for good reason.
• The order you draw from things. Which pot you spend first changes your tax bill, and after April 2027 it also changes what is left inside your estate for inheritance tax.
• Sequencing risk. A poor few years early in retirement does more lasting damage than the same years later on. There are ways to reduce that exposure.

Drawing an income once you have stopped

The decisions do not end when the salary does. Drawdown gives you flexibility and leaves you carrying the investment and longevity risk. An annuity hands that risk to an insurer in exchange for giving up access to the capital.

There is no universally right answer, which is why we would rather model your position than tell you what people generally do. What matters is your other income, your health, whether you have a partner to provide for, and how much variability you can live with.

Where pensions meet tax

Pension decisions are tax decisions. The tax-free lump sum, the annual allowance, the tapered allowance for higher earners, and the money purchase annual allowance that bites once you have flexibly accessed a pot all interact.

From 6 April 2027 most unused pension funds count towards your estate for inheritance tax, which changes the long-standing logic of leaving a pension untouched to pass on. Our guide to inheritance tax on pensions from April 2027 explains that change in full. We cover that alongside inheritance tax and tax planning.