Pension pot - drawdown or annuity?

[Cocojazz]

I'm looking to retire in the next year or so. I have a few pensions - 2 will pay out a regular yearly amount (DB pensions) and I have a pretty good pension pot worth 200K (DC pension). I also have a small cash ISA and a reasonable stocks & shares ISA.

What I would like to hear is if any of you took an annuity via your pension pot or whether you just took money out as and when you needed it (drawdown)? I'm just feeling a little nervous with what route to take and want to make the most of my retirement. I'm due to meet with a financial advisor in the next month or so but it would be nice to hear about people's experiences before I see him.

I'm a few years off the state pension but have worked out that I will have enough to tide me over until then. I'm married, the mortgage is paid off but have an 18 year old son who is still at home.

Any thoughts/tips would be appreciated. TIA.

If you haven't already had your pensionwise appointment I would suggest you do that as it can be quite helpful. Your DB pension will clearly give you quite a lot of certainty and if that is liveable on alone, you could go the drawdown route (after taking your 25% tax free portion).

If the DC one needs to be part of your day to day living I would be more inclined to the annuity route or you could split it and do part annuity and part drawdown.

Do get proper advice. Will an annuity pay anything out to your heirs if you die before a certain age? Would your son benefit from such a payout? Or would all the money you’d put into the pension be lost when you die? If drawing down, can you manage if you just take 4% a year (recommended as means you don’t touch the invested money, just the interest), or would you actually have to take out and spend your pension pot? How long would it last if the latter? If the former, do those various pensions combined with the 4% give enough to live on comfortably given rising costs? You may be happy about eating into that pension pot to see you through to state pension age, but need to consider all these factors.

I took early retirement at 57 a couple of years ago (best thing I ever did!). OH is a few years younger so still works 2-days a week.
I have a good DB pension which I started drawing immediately.
I also have a fairly healthy DC pension which I have just started to draw-down and is anticipated to last until I am well into my 70's (based on current figures).
Full SP for both OH & I when we reach 67.
ISA's, shares, PB's etc so all major future purchases (cars, house extension etc) are covered, we still manage to save and we pay a significant amount into OH's pension each month.
No mortgage or other debts.

We live very comfortably and in fact have more disposable income now than when I was working FT as I was channeling so much into my pension, employer savings schemes etc.
There is no real need for my OH to work even 2-days a week but it does enable him to pay more into his pension.

Had regular conversations with my retirement planner and annuities were never really considered for my situation, I think they had gone out of fashion.

We looked at fixed term annuities to bridge the gap to 67 but the rate was awful.
They wanted £45k to give £50k of income from 2027 for 5 years, this was single life, no guarantee and nothing left after 5 years! Truly garbage.
The younger you are, the worse value they are.
Even a collapsing Gilt ladder looks poor value for us from 2027-2032 unless interest rates fall below 3%.
Have a play with this link to see if Gilts might work for you.

lategenxer.streamlit.app/Gilt_Ladder

We’ve left 3 years of our early retirement pot in a short term money market fund instead, it pays the interbank rate, so 4.5% currently. We’ll drip sell a few units over the next couple of years for the following 3 years.

Thanks everyone. Definitely some good advice here!

I've been using drawdown to fill the gap between retirement at 60 and getting my state pension. The invested sum has not dwindled as much as I had thought it might, though it suffered from the turmoil after the Truss budget. When I looked at annuities the rates were terrible unless you have chronic health conditions.

Pensionwise were great at explaining all the possible options, an excellent service.

Pensionwise don’t give advice though.
All they do is explain the various options, they don’t say which is best for your personal circumstances.