Retirement Planning

It pays to be prepared as retirement nears. It’s never too early to start thinking about your retirement options and the choices you’ll need to make.

Work out your likely retirement income

Your starting point is to work out how much you are likely to have in retirement. You should do this about two years before you retire.

This involves:

1. Getting a State Pension statement. If you haven’t recently received a State Pension statement, it’s a good idea to get one. This will give you an estimate of how much State Pension you might receive, based on your National Insurance contributions so far. You can do this at the GOV.UK website.
2. Finding out how much you might get from your defined benefit pension. Every year you’ll be sent a statement showing you how much pension you’ve built up so far and how much you might get when you retire. Find the most recent one or ask for a new statement if it’s out of date.
3. Adding up the savings and investments that you could use for your retirement. A pension is a good way to save for your retirement but you might also have other savings or investments that you could use to increase your income when you retire.
4. Tracing any lost pensions. If you’ve lost track of any old pensions, the Pension Tracing Service can help you find them. This is a free service run by the Government – don’t confuse it with commercial services that have a similar name but charge a fee.

The value of pensions and the income they produce can fall as well as rise. You may get back less than you invested.

Tax treatment varies according to individual circumstances and is subject to change.