Ask a Scottish Widows expert your questions on pensions and retirement - 3 x £100 voucher to be won!

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We are working with Scottish Widows to help answer any questions you have on pensions and retirement. With minimum workplace pension contributions increasing in April, from 5% to 8%, we’d love to hear your questions or any thoughts you have, either on this or about pensions and retirement in general.

Scottish Widows Retirement Expert Jackie Leiper has volunteered to answer your top questions and is passionate in helping women plan for their financial future.

Jackie said: “We know women face their own unique challenges in saving for the future. With more women working part time and many of us going on maternity leave at various points in our careers it’s often difficult to know if you’re saving enough for your future.

With an increase to workplace pensions in April I want to help explain what the changes could mean for you and how a small increase now could really make a big difference to your future.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions on the changes or anything that’s in the back of your mind regarding saving for retirement.

To help get you started and explore the upcoming changes you can watch our Pension Basics film or visit our website to see how it could impact you.”

Whatever questions you have around pensions and retirement, please post them below and we will choose 10 for Jackie to answer. Everyone who posts a question below will be entered into a prize draw to win one of three £100 vouchers of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw.

MNHQ

Terms & conditions apply

I have several pension pots from various different employers including my present job. I'd like to start making additional payments myself - how do I decide which one is best to pay into? What should I be looking at?

I have a teachers pension but I’m not sure what age I can start using it. How can I find out

How can I track down pensions from jobs that I did over ten years ago? I'm not even sure I paid into a pension, but I worked for the companies for quite a few years so I think I must have?

What's the best way to arrange a pension if you are part time self-employed?

My husband and I have separate work pensions. How will they cover us when one dies (before or after retirement)?

What's the best place to find out independent information about income required in retirement, and the best way of saving for this? I have a work-based pension, but feel very illiterate about the whole arrangements.

I've seen a lot of new apps coming into the market promoting their service which combines old pensions together but I was advised before that overall it's probably better to keep them separate, what is the current advice on this please?

I pay into the NHS pension as part of my job. Is it possible to and would you recommend paying into a personal pension too?

It is worth me starting a pension at my age (43)? I had a good job with a pension attached but had to finish full time work a few years ago due to injury; I now only work part time in a different job with a much lower wage and no workplace pension.

MUMSNET - Is there an update to these pension questions?

I once had a boyfriend whose parents started a pension for him on his 18th birthday. At the time I laughed, but now I would like to know if this is genuinely the best way to do it? As you can imagine the monthly payments were very low so is it worth doing this for my own dc's?

Erm ... that should have said PLEASE. ... does this emoji mean
embarrassed?

How big is the gender gap in pensions? We hear a lot about women being disproportionately affected by having insufficient funds in their pension pot

Are we getting any feedback to these questions please? Thanks

I wonder if the feedback will be before or after we've all retired 😄.

I'm as late to the thread as I am to pension planning! What advice can you give to someone in their fifties with no retirement planning whatsoever?

Hi all - thanks for leaving your questions!

You can find the answers here

Thanks!