Can I cash in my pension now? Money problems.

[Weegle]

DH and I are trying to work out finances, this evening, because that is the only time we both have together and things are dire.

We're in a bit of a hole because our car cost us £1500 last week, money we simply did not have. This has gone on the credit card which is now maxed out and we need to afford the repayments.

Anyway the only option left is to borrow the money to cover the car payment (which we won't be able to afford) or I wondered about cashing in my old stakeholder pension from my old job. But I can't find anywhere whether I can in fact do this and their phone lines aren't open until tomorrow and we really wanted to come up with a solution tonight.

So - can I cash in the pension? It's Standard Life Stakeholder scheme.

Before anyone jumps on me for fixing a short term problem and making a longer term one we have other pension arrangements in place and this plan I'm talking about is £3.8k and hasn't been paid in to for 3 years, it is effectively "dead money", no use as a pension but would be very handy right now.

don't think you can cash in pensions but I'm not an expert - just tried it myself once!

I think consolidating your credit card debt into a personal loan might be a better way of managing the payments rather than trying to pay off the credit card and effectively getting nowhere because of the interest rate.

I'm just worried we won't be able to afford a the repayments on the loan as we are literally only just making ends meet at the moment

we don't pay interest on the CC -we currently can afford to pay it off, but we can't afford it now it's got the £1.5k of garage bill on there

can you get the loan over an extended period of time, say 5 years? This will make the payments more affordable.

you can not take money out of pensions other than when you retire or pass it to a different provider -- all the money paid in is tax free and so it can not be returned as if a savings pot.. except within first 2 years of plan..

ok thanks - at least I know that's not an option then. Makes sense.

I guess I'm just loathe to get a loan but can't see any other option. Stupid blinkin car.

Most pensions and depending on occupation, cannot be taken until 50 and then have to be taken by 75. In a few years time that age will be raised to 55.
Never a good idea to cash in a pension unless you have to as you will have to draw the income (in most cases). drawing it early means you will take a smaller pension.

Some pensions (I can't remember off the top of my head about stakeholder, which have fairly strict rule, but if you're still after the answer, I could find out), you can cash in at any time, but you have to pay tax of something like 35% on what you get. Have you come up with a solution now?