Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Money matters

Find financial and money-saving discussions including debt and pension chat on our Money forum. If you're looking for ways to make your money to go further, sign up to our Moneysaver emails here.

basic pension qu's (figures provided) - advice please?

2 replies

TirednessOnToast · 30/01/2026 12:46

As part of my divorce 2 yrs ago I was awarded some of exH's pension.
(I do not know how much is now 'in the pot' : it was a local govt type pension
my lawyers made a huge mess of things so I finished the Divorce myself)

The pension in my name is marked as 'Deferred' & I am not allowed to add to it.
It will go up in line with inflation each April, according to their advice line.
I can draw it from age 65 (I'm now 58) & would get:

Annual payment of £10.5K or £6,8K with a lump sum of £45,5K
I appreciate it is 7 years hence but should I draw down the lump at time or not?

I don't think it's worth me getting 'a financial adviser' as I have no other assets and am a Carer for my disabled young adults so I'm not in an easy £ position.

OP posts:
Soontobe60 · 30/01/2026 12:59

Look at it a different way. You can exchange £1000 of pension for £12000 of lump sum. After 12 years of drawing your pension this will have balanced out - if you invest all the lump sum, at say 5%, it would be worth around £18.5K.
Meanwhile, the annual pension will increase by CPI annually. I took an additional lump sum for my Teacher pension, converting £3k to £36k lump sum. That was 6 years ago and now my pension has exceeded what I would have got had I not done the conversion.
After 12 years, I will start to lose out as my lump sum will be worth less than the total of additional pension I could have taken. However, I used it to pay off my mortgage and this allowed me to retire early. For me, it was a no brainer and wasn’t just down to money in the bank.

TirednessOnToast · 30/01/2026 13:34

@Soontobe60 - Thank you, that is really helpful as I was trying to think it through, given I don't know if I will live to be 66 or 96!
For me, the most important thing is to leave some assets to my young people.

It is a defined benfits pension. Weirdly the figure I was given on the phone just now is completely different to the figure on the website. When I called to check they are 'not sure' if I can get my full pension at 65 or at 67 plus the website says: 'this is a guide, do not rely on these figures, we are not responsible'. Ooof.

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page