Saving for retirement comes with instructions: put money in, leave it alone, repeat. Spending it comes with none. After decades of watching the pot grow, drawing it down feels like doing something wrong, and the fear of running out stops many people enjoying money they spent forty years earning.
This is the part of financial planning we think matters most.
There are two main ways to turn a pension into income. Drawdown keeps your pension invested and you take money out as you need it, which is flexible but means your income isn't guaranteed. An annuity swaps some or all of your pot for a guaranteed income for life, which is certain but fixed. Neither is better; they solve different problems, and plenty of our clients end up with a blend: guaranteed income covering the essentials, drawdown funding the rest.
Your spending in retirement may not be a flat line, so your plan shouldn't be either. The early years could be the more expensive ones: the trips you've waited for, the home improvements, the generosity to family. Later, life could get quieter and cheaper, until care needs might make it expensive again. We can build your income plan around that real shape, not a tidy percentage from a textbook, and this will be reviewed each year because no plan survives thirty years untouched.
How you take money matters as much as how much you take. Drawing from pensions, ISAs and other savings in the right order, and using your tax-free entitlements properly, could save a serious amount of tax over a retirement. It's your money; there's no sense handing over more of it than the rules require.
From 6 April 2027, most unused pension funds will count as part of your estate for inheritance tax purposes. Many advisers have traditionally recommended spending your pension last, since it sat outside of your estate, but for many people that logic is about to flip. If your plan was built before this change, it's worth revisiting.
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