Withdrawing from pension at 55

[AAAAYY]

I am 55 & have 4 pensions worth approx £70k. This is split 4 ways 1- £4900 2 - £5200 3 - £28,000 & 4 - £32000. My daughter is starting uni this year and would like to take out 25% to help her with accommodation and I have some other debt I would like to pay off. My current salary is £56k (if that's relevant). I am fortunate in as much as dad is downsizing his house next year and is going pay her accommodation from then and give me a lump sum from the sale so I will be able to pay this back onto my pension (or invest in an ISA - I'll speak to an IFA when I receive this) then and I will also be paying any future bonuses in from next year.

Before anyone comments, I know my pension isn't much at the moment but I should be able to build this up before I retire (hopefully 65ish).

I have no idea the best way to do this - in as much do I cash in the small pots or leave these and take from larger pensions.

Any advice would be great. TY

Edited, as I had not read the whole thread, sorry…

Rules are slightly different for your 2 small pensions. From gov.uk;
A pension worth up to £10,000
You can usually take any pension worth up to £10,000 in one go. This is called a ‘small pot’ lump sum. If you take this option, 25% is tax-free.

You can usually get:

up to 3 small pot lump sums from different personal pensions
unlimited small pot lump sums from different workplace pensions

Lots of places will consolidate e.g AJ Bell, Scottish widows. Look for switching bonuses or short term fee free offers as well. Check if there are any disadvantages to moving your pension if invested in with profits funds. Typical fee would be 0.25% for the platform and another 0.1-0.3% for a passive global tracker or multi asset fund. There may be dealing fees on top but these are often not applied to regular investment.

Again, this might also be awful decision. There are specific beneficial rules for small pension pots and combining them may make sense or be a very costly mistake. I suggest you do rebel Finance course. It's 10 weeks and has just started for this year. Free on YouTube and work through it until the pensions part comes up.

The most important thing is to get the ones you have performing well. Lumping them together feels "tidier" and logical but in reality it's sometimes at a penalty.

Ideally go for the lowest management fee possible and the widest diversity of funds for maximum growth and lowest cost. AJ bell and the like will cost you and reduce your gains. Watch some videos, your future self needs to understand it. It's actually not as complex as you might think once it's explained simply.

Well done Dad!

You can combine your pensions but it doesn't really matter if you don't, there's no huge downside to having multiple providers. Just don't pay anyone loads of ££ to do it for you, especially for low values.

First thing is to check, for each one, what the charges and fees are for each and what they're invested in, just the 'risk rating' is sufficient. You want to make sure the risk rating feels right to you. Check if any fees are unusually high or much higher than the other, it might be worth transferring those. Also double check there aren't any special terms associated with the pensions (for example a guaranteed annuity (GAR)) which you generally don't want to transfer.

Currently it would also make sense to pay any income in the 40% bracket into a pension - either work or private - to get the tax back & reduced your tax liability.

If you withdraw any monies from a defined contribution pension, your annual pension allowance will drop to £10,000 from the regular £60,000 annual allowance. This means that, going forward, you can put no more than £10,000 in your pension each tax year, employees and employers contributions combined. If you contribute on a salary sacrifice basis to your pension, you may lose out on tax savings at source via your salary.

l will be doing this with annual
bonus from next year.

OP - I'm so glad you've listened to posters and your dad on this issue!

You earn a good salary and already have a sum in your pension pot so, now you're rid of your ex, you've got the opportunity to get on your feet and build your pension.

You might want to think about salary sacrificing the £6K so you're not paying 40% on it. Good idea to consolidate pensions.

I'd encourage you to sign up for the free Rebel Finance School 2026 on YouTube. It will really help you get an understanding of finance, ISAs, pensions etc.

Best of luck!

Meaningful Money podcast has episode last week and this week about how to combine pensions.
Doing so can reduce admin and reduce fees.
You want to avoid increasing fees, so it is important to gather details of all pensions and then do some calculations.
https://meaningfulmoney.tv/2026/05/27/can-you-oversimplify-your-pensions-part-1/

Id ask your daughter if she wants to defer for a year and work, and then your dad can help her.

This is incorrect.

You are right to go to Pensionwise OP. An IFA is unlikely to want to help as you’re a nightmare client (said gently), there’s no way they’d put their name to you spending your (small) pension in this way. They will be thinking ahead and wondering what you are going to live on when you retire.

You could consolidate your plans with someone like PensionBee then draw your TFC if you have to. Drawing taxable income and paying 40% tax on it is a terrible idea though.

That’s not correct. You can just withdraw the tax free portion and not touch any of the taxable amount.

There is a huge benefit of doing this which is that future contributions aren’t limited whereas if you take even £1 of taxable pension you are limited to a max of £10k pa contributions for life.

Great. Plus it's the pre-tax amount, so you will actually get more than the 40% added to your pension pot.

Whatever you can add this year would also be good, it literally feels like getting 100% of your wage income back over £50,270. Think you can also add for previous ?3 years too.

Please note: you will need to inform HMRC to get the 40% (as we only routinely get the 20% back). Once you've done it once that should be it- there's an oonline form to do this.

Please call Pensionwise they gave me excellent advice.

so glad that your dad has reiterated what has been posted here and you are abandoning this plan

Your dd will be fine