Phone PensionWise for some free guidance

PensionWise is a really helpful service provided by the Government for people who want an impartial sounding board for their pension decisions when they are coming up to retirement.

Who will it suit?

You have to be over 50 to use this service so millennials need not apply.

It won’t give you all the answers and the advisers on the phones cannot give you personalised advice. Just guidance. So – for example – they can help you to work out what you might expect as an annual income from your total pensions savings. They can walk you through the difference between annuities and drawdown and what the pros and cons of each are. They can explain how the tax rules work around this.

But they won’t be able to tell you what to do. SO they can’t tell you whether to stay with our current provider. They can’t tell you whether you should take out all your tax-free cash now or later. And they can’t tell you where to buy an annuity. But they will furnish you with a lot of help and information for you to make these decisions yourself.

What does it cost?

Here’s the good bit. It’s FREE! And Government-backed so you can have an element of comfort that there is not a spiv in sight, incentivised to sell you a dodgy pension. (Unless you are an anti-Government conspiracy theorist but let’s not go down that path…)!

What are the drawbacks?

The only drawbacks are that pensions are complicated and sometimes we just weakly want to mutter, “Please just tell me what to dooooo.” If this is you then you will need to pay for some financial advice.

But if you want to take an hour to fire questions at well-qualified people and get a lot of information and a steer – it’s a pretty good use of an hour.

Where can I find out more?

You can read more here.