Can someone guide me a bit with money / pensions please?

[Canistayinbed]

Our situation is as follows

Married, I’m 50, DH 58. Both work FT - I earn 34k, DH 31k. Own home outright worth 300k. Adult kids living at home.

Ive got a final salary pension (is this defined benefit?) that was paid into for 14 years. Have no idea how much is in it as you have to apply to get a value. I also have another pension that is being paid into, currently at around £6500 a year and has a current value of 80k.

DH also has a final salary pension for 18 years (again no idea what’s in it) plus a smaller pension his employer pays into around 3K a year - that’s worth about 40k.

We have 26k in Premium bonds, 10k in a year ISA and about 10k in cash savings in a current account.

We are due to Inherit about 30k in the next few months.

Dh is getting tired of shift work, we’d love him to reduce hours or even retire.

I don’t think we’re going to have a huge retirement fund looking at the figures.

What should we prioritise? We like small holidays a few times a year. We save about £600 a month but we spend a fair bit on holidays and weekends away (life can be too short)

Any advice please? What should we do with the 30k? Top up the premium bonds to max? Put into an ISA? We might downsize a bit in a few years. I just feel we aren’t making the most of managing our money.

To make a plan, you need to be more certain about where you are starting from. Check your state pension forecasts and find out how much is in the final salary pensions (and what age you can take them).

Pensions or ISA (do you currently have a cash one, stocks and shares or both) are likely to be the best options for a lump sum investment. Premium bonds are an OK place for an emergency fund because of the easy access, but the return isn't great.

You really need to know what annual amount you’ll be getting from your DB pensions. It’s hard to plan without knowing this. I get an annual statement which tells me what I’ll get at retirement age. Do you not get this?

I pay extra into my work DB pension for tax reasons, so you could do this.

You are unlikely to get a ‘value’ from the defined benefit scheme. Instead they’ll tell you what your pension will be per year at age X with a lump sum of Y. As pp has said this will normally be in an annual statement of benefit (I think they save the term ‘value’ for when you need a figure for valuations eg in a divorce). Depending on the retirement age of these schemes, you may wish to see how you are impacted if you take them early (a reduction will be applied) or late (you’ll get more)

You should also get a statement of how much is in the defined contribution scheme . As these work like a saving plan you don’t get a reduction/increase in the same way you do for a defined benefit. Once the money is gone, it’s gone. I believe the general rule is 4% a year withdrawal will allow the capital to stay intact.

Finally get a state pension forecast which will tell you what you’ll receive at what age and if you need to top up any contributions.

you may wish to see how you are impacted if you take them early (a reduction will be applied) or late (you’ll get more)

Depends on the scheme. All reduce for taking early, but in some you don't get more for taking it late.

Focus on understanding the final salary / DB pensions first.
Don't try to understand the 'pot size', find out how much they will pay per year and from when. E.g. will they pay £6,000 per year, index linked from age 60?
Also check your state pension entitlement on gov.uk. Don't make any assumptions about your entitlement, the only way to know is to log in and obtain your personal forecast.
You then want to get an idea of how much income you will need in retirement and the years between now and retirement - potentially for you (adult children and no mortgage?) those outgoings might not change too much?
You can then do a model of income per year and outgoings per year. Don't forget tax.
Then you can play around with this model, see if you could retire earlier, see how much top up from savings / other pensions you need per year. See what happens if you reduce your income.
Hope that makes sense. Have a go.

I think the obvious answer is that there are some quite substantial missing pieces of information - you need to contact all the pension schemes and find out exactly what you have.

The two final salary schemes are likely to pay a reasonable amount.

And could your husband shift job or reduce hours as a halfway house?