I am self-employed with only a state pension. How to increase my money for retirement?

Hi Sandra,

I am happy to help.

Typically the best way to save for your retirement is through investing in a pension.

The reason for this is that pensions benefit from tax relief which is mostly automatically added to your investment. You are also able to claim additional tax relief if you are a higher rate or additional rate taxpayer.

Pension Tax Relief
For most pensions you would normally get 20% tax relief added to whatever you pay in, up to set limits. This 20% relief is based on the amount you invest into your pension, after the tax relief is added - so the simplest way to calculate this is to divide your contribution by 0.80.

So if you invest £100 into your pension, this contribution into your pension will be topped up to £125.

Withdrawing your pension
When you come to draw your pension, you can withdraw 25% of the value tax free and the remaining funds will be taxed as income.

You can use the pension pot to either:

• Buy a secure income - called an annuity,

• Draw down money as a regular income,

• Draw ad hoc lump sums

• Withdraw the full plan value.

There are risks and features with all of these options which you will need to consider when you start drawing on the pension, but most pension statements will only show the option to buy an annuity, in their forecasts of what you might be able to do with the pension in future. I will use an example to explain the tax relief
I will compare investing into a pension with investing in an ISA.

Pensions and ISAs are both tax efficient investments, however they do differ:

ISAs do not get any tax relief added to the contributions,
however you don’t have to pay tax when you withdraw from an ISA,
you have to be over 55 to access a pension, whereas an ISA can be accessed more freely.

The long term benefits of a pension
With a pension you will earn a return on what you pay in, as well as the tax relief.

This will help the investment grow quicker than if it was invested in the same investment within an ISA.

For your objectives - Private Pension
Therefore for your objectives Sandra, a private pension will more than likely be a better option for you.

You can only invest £40,000 or up to the value of your overall pensionable earnings (whichever is lower), per tax year into a pension, so there are limits and rules that you would need to consider.

If you need more specific advice based on your circumstances, to explore what you can and can’t do, it may be helpful for you to speak to a financial adviser.

You may also benefit from having help with creating a plan to understand how much you need to save, to help you build up enough of a pension to support you, and good financial planning can help with this.

State pension forecast
I also think it is important to get a state pension forecast and the link to get this is here - www.gov.uk/check-state-pension.


I hope this is helpful!