Have you looked at your pension pot ?

[AwayADay]

Due to the current world situation pension pot is down £11,000 .
Sadly dh is retiring at 60 , which is basically now so that is not the situation we wanted to find ourselves in .

Did you plan to buy an annuity straight away? Markets move all the time - it might be recovered by the time you need it.

It depends what the percentage is, 11k on a million is not so bad if its £200k its quite a lot. My tiny one is down about £200 on £25k, ( my main pension is final salary)

This is why the advice is to de-risk as you begin to approach retirement, e.g. by shifting the balance towards bonds rather than equities, and potentially increasing the amount you hold in cash so if necessary you can avoid touching your investments for a reasonable length of time if there is a downturn.

Just wait it out. Mine cratered at the start of Covid but recovered fine.

Yep, been tracking it closely for the last few months as I'm due to withdraw a lump sum in the next couple of weeks - it was rising nicely until a few days ago and now dropping quite sharply 😬... I activated the withdrawal today!

Everything is down, inc Bonds/Gilts but my Fidelity pension fell a bit but has now recovered most losses, it had a large cash reserve and this has gone, i think they probably bought Defence or Oil stocks!!!

There is no guaranteed safe haven initially at times like this BUT once things stabilise, the confidence will return.

I think this will be a relatively short term decline.

I check mine every month....its gone down £20k since 28th February. Not worried.

Mine is down 2.5% since the start of the month.

I won’t be looking as I don’t want to panic. If it’s all down now is this a good time to put in my lump sum for the year or should I wait?

I'm not gonna worry about a long term investment being impacted by short term global circumstances. I'm sure it's down but it'll recover. I'm 39 though, appreciate if someone was coming up to retirement age now would not be the ideal time!

I agree long term probably not much to worry about . But those that are accessing it this year do .

Does anybody buy annuities now? They're one of the worst financial products available unless you know you will live to 125, when the actuaries say 82. Flexi-drawdown is the way to go.

"Accessing" doesn't mean cashing it all in, though, unless you're buying an annuity (maybe don't, while the market is down!). One approach is to have a "cash ladder" - enough put by in cash, that you can not sell shares while they're down, but instead live off the cash and top it up when shares are up again. Have a look at Pete Matthew's Meaningful Money stuff e.g. on youtube. If your DH must sell shares while the market is down, try to do that as little as possible, then get set up with something more robust against the next market crash.

Also, "this year" is a long time. I wouldn't assume markets will be down for months, never mind the rest of the year, at this stage. And keep it in perspective - the FTSE All World is still higher now than it was 6 months ago.

Annuities are actually pretty good value at the moment.

For once, am OK with my pension pot - I have a cash bond maturing next week to move into my SIPP, I'll be buying units into it at a low rate. Still a rubbish global situation though 🙁

I am hoping it stays down next week when I am putting a chunk of my bonus into my retirement account. Would be nice to buy at a discount. I have started to derisk a little with slightly more bonds/ stable investment as I hit 50. At 60 I expect to have transitioned more into less risky investment for about 40-50 of the portfolio. It’s all a trade off between risk and growth. I am down about 8k on 360k for one investment and the other is down 5k on 700k & I am not concerned. When Trump first do tariffs it dropped 90k across the 2 but recovered. It’s only an on paper loss until you sell

added to it today, good time to buy but don’t cash anything out rn, sit tight if you can

Yes mine dropped £ 19k , I was expecting a 20% wipeout but not so far . When Trump introduced his tariffs it dropped £100k so £19 feels lucky given the situation. This won’t be the end of it though and investments do fluctuate. The trick is not to panic and make big withdrawals.

Same here . I’m flexi drawdown and it works well . I don’t spend the same every year so makes sense to just draw what I need

Mine has dropped by about 2%. I’ll be adding funds to it in the new tax year so I’ll get more for my money.

My pension is mostly public sector, but I have one private sector pot, how much has your pot dropped? I forget about mine and don’t even factor it in my calculations as it’s so small (£20k) it’s only dropped a few hundred this week, it’s in a medium risk portfolio I think.

OP, it is horrible when you are about to retire or already retired and have no option but to draw down and crystalise the lower value. And there’s a fair bit of complacency about your situation from some pp on this thread.

I put my redundancy money into
my pension just before Covid (a week before), it went down when Russia invaded Ukraine, performed at a low rate , started to recover, tanked when Trump introduced tariffs, had just recovered … and now teeters. Dropped , but gained a bit of upwards movement yesterday.

Never been more aware of the value of DB pensions for those who have them.

I would say delay draw down as long as possible.

Mine's dropped a bit, but still massively up compared to anything else I would have done with the money. This is what investing is.

In previous oil price shocks there was a significant dip but it was back to growth again in a couple of months with full recovery in less than 6 months. I wouldn't worry too much as long as you are well diversified.

Min is down about 5% but given that it grew 5% the month before it is still where is was in late January.

Husband bought an annuity so last year which I was really pleased about. He didn't have much of a pension pot, so wanted certainty. Annuity rates were really good and it seemed like a pretty good deal, he would win if reaches 82 and if he doesn't, he won't care.

However, he would worry if he was watching his pension pot go up and down knowing he needed to draw down some money, even with a small lump sum to cushion the timing, That would just cause financial stress at a time when he doesn't want that. It may be different if you have a big enough pot, but for him and us an annuity was the better option.