What should I do to best help me in my retirement?

Thanks for your question Lucy hopefully I can help provide some information on the options available.

Firstly, it is important to have a thorough understanding of your current pensions. It could be that there are benefits to keeping them where they are as well as benefits to moving them. So, I would suggest you contact each provider and find out:

• The charges you are paying
• Any exit charges you would need to pay on transferring the plan away
• If the plan has any guarantees – for example, a guaranteed annuity rate or an investment guarantee

Carrying out this research helps you avoid losing out. It can get quite complicated though which is where an adviser can help.

Thinking about retirement more generally, a good place to start is to understand how much income you might need. As an indication, according to Retirement Living Standards (https://www.retirementlivingstandards.org.uk/), retired single people (outside London) typically spend:

• £10,200 a year for a Minimum lifestyle
• £20,200 a year for a Moderate lifestyle
• £33,000 a year for a Comfortable lifestyle

And then to find out what sort of income you could get from all your assets, spend five mins using our retirement calculator.