I need someone to help me check my pension planning figures not someone to sell me their product.

[petuniasandpetals]

So who should I ask?
Im 60, disabled and in receipt of PIP, ESA and a small pension
ive just found out my DH is soon to be divorcing me.
This throws everything into chaos as I need to move house and will hopefully get a decent amount of equity.
I have an ISA and another small pension I’ve not claimed.
i am pretty sure I will be ok if I do equity release on my new home.
i was given the name of a financial advisor who seemed to want to sell bonds which I don’t feel I need.
i just need someone to check out my figures are correct as im not mathematically minded.
where should I go for help?

I don't know but i've always had the same problem.

Someone pushing their own agenda instead of doing whats best for me. Sorry not helpful response I know!

Don't forget you can ask for a share of your husband's pension in the divorce.

Be very careful with equity release - especially at only 60, and if you might need care later.

Pensionwise is a free government advice service for pension planning. https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/pensions-and-retirement/pension-wise

It's not full financial advice, but should be able to help with at least part of what you need.

Money coach. A coach cannot sell financial products. They don’t provide regulated advice. They talk to you about your objectives, look at your figures, give suggestions, help you to help yourself.

You need an IFA who charges fees rather than being paid by commission. And they need to be truly independent, ie not St James' Place or similar. However there are relatively few of them around and the fees will start at four figures because regulation means they need to do a huge amount of paperwork and risk assessment before they can advise you. It's a huge problem in my view, and the direct cause of why most financial advisers only sell products.

Look for a financial planner .. we paid for one to review all our pensions to work out how much they would pay .. they gave advice on which to consolidate as I had 10 varying in size .. did not sell me anything other than this guidance

I would say you need an accountant. You will need (I assume) someone to look at what you have for the divorce anyway, so perhaps they could provide some help with planning.

Thanks all. I’ve been using chat gpt which is very good.

Do be careful with chat gpt- I asked it to build me a cashflow ladder and what it created was absolute rubbish.

Never, ever rely on ChatGPT, or other LLM AI for anything like this. Or recipes, or travel itineraries, or anything that requires facts and understanding. It's a glorified predictive text system that doesn't know how the world works and frequently makes things up.