People and the press seem to forget that flexible and capped drawn down are already there. It is just they are being changed a bit. At present you need to have £20k of other income before you can take your pension pot subject to 55% tax , soon it will be £12k income and from April 2015 you will not need any other annuity income and can take all the pot as cash. That for most people who have saved for 30 years in reasonable jobs will be taxed at 45% on much of it. So it is a tax reduction from 55% if you draw the lot to 45%. (Capped draw down already here is not very useful - you don't draw an annuity but you draw an income instead which tends to be 20% worse off than you'd have under an annuity so we can ignore it here).
Currently if you have tiny amounts of a few thousand in your pension you can already take it all as cash by the way. There are special rules for that which are slightly changing.
If you are on £20k a year and have say £200k in your pension pot then at age 55 whether you retire or not (rising to age 57 by 2028) or later you will be able to take it all as cash. On our example some of that is taxed at that perons' 20% rate, some at 40% and some at 45%. If you have £500k in the pot most of it will be taxed at 45% (a 10% reduction on what you pay now - 55%).
I am ignoring above the fact that 25% of that case has always been and hopefully will remain drawable at retirement tax free.
If you are on a low income you won't have much of a pension anyway and its amounts will be so small under current rules you can draw them tax free anyway. If it is a biggish pot then it is likely when you draw it all out 75% will be taxed at 45%. If instead you buy an annuity then that of course is taxed too - my father paid 40% tax on the pension income he drew. He saved all his life into pensions, worked full time until 77 and died at 79.
Remember just as important is that fact that from 6 April the maximum in your pot ni any type of pension comes down to £1.25m before punitive taxes are applied. |This will catch anyone on £60k or above with a pension even a final salary one, many head teachers, doctors etc. by 6 April you can apply to protect some of that at the current maximum pot level of £1.5m. Do that. Check it. Get your husband to check his.
The comment is correct above that if you take lump sum that affects your benefits BUT already you can take sums up to about £10k if that is all the pension pot it - www.hmrc.gov.uk/pensionschemes/small-pen.htm.
In my view rather than being the biggest change in 100 years on pensions they are an addition to the existing rules and all smoke and mirrors in their suggestion this is a big deal.
The bottom line sadly for this website though is that most women have virtually no pensions and often allow don't claim them on divorce from their hsuband when they can as they prefer cash in hand to spend now.
The biggest financial issue for women is not earning much, giving up work and having to rely on a husband's career, pension and earnings. That is what we somehow need to cure, to help women make good financial choices, save etc. Women are often better than men at being careful, saving, protecting their children etc however so there is much to hope for now that 60% of graduates are female and women often earn more than their husbands and more do than not up to age 40. The tide is turning. Whether you want to lock money up in a pension particularly if you are self employed so have no employer contribution is another matter. They change the rules so much - flexible draw down rules have been changed 4 times in the last 5 years alone even though there is tax relief in the way in but not on the way out it may not be the best or only way of saving and the money is locked up until at least age 55 (moving to age 57 under the changes this week from 2028).