Since 6 April 2015, the “Pension Freedoms” have allowed UK taxpayers to withdraw up to 25% of the value of their pension pot(s), tax-free, from the age of 55. Yet is it a good idea to take this amount out of your pension? There are pros and cons to weigh up, and it often helps to get help from a financial planner…
Annuities have been largely “out of favour” as a retirement planning option since the 2015 Pension Freedoms. Yet, with interest rates steadily rising since late 2021, annuity rates and sales are on the rise. In this article, our financial planners in Padiham explain how annuities work, why they are becoming…
The rising cost of living (inflation) is having a big impact on household incomes in 2022. This includes pensioners, whose income might not currently stretch as far as it did last year when the UK’s inflation rate stood closer to the Bank of England’s target (2%). Yet how, exactly, is inflation affecting pensions…
With 93% of adults in Great Britain reporting a rise in their living costs in 2022, it is a good time to explore ideas to boost your finances. Is it possible, for instance, that you are one of the 22m people with “unclaimed money” sitting in dormant accounts or “lost” pensions? In this article, our Burnley financial planners…
An annuity is a product that gives you a guaranteed lifetime income in retirement. It can offer stability and peace of mind, providing a steadily rising income each year to help keep up with inflation. Over the last 7 years since the 2015 Pension Freedoms were introduced, however, annuities have widely fallen…
Do you – or someone you know – work for the NHS? When you start working for the NHS, you should be automatically enrolled onto the NHS Pension Scheme. Yet what is it, exactly, and how does it work? Does it offer good value for retirement planning and are there better alternatives…
UK residents now change jobs 17 times, on average, across their working lives. With each new job that you take, moreover, your employer is obliged to sign you up to the organisation’s pension scheme under UK auto-enrolment rules. As such, you could end up with over a dozen pension pots from your career…
Some recent headlines have argued that public sector pensions (civil servants, doctors etc.) offer the best deal. Yet is this truly the case? This is important to address, as it may affect your future career choices. Below, our team at Elmfield Financial Planning in Padiham, Burnley, puts forward some…
Some key changes came to the teachers’ pension scheme from April 2022. Depending on the time you qualify to receive a teachers’ pension, it may no longer be possible for you to access a “final salary pension” (i.e. where you receive a guaranteed, lifetime income in retirement based on what you earned near…
The new State Pension was introduced in April 2016, partly in an attempt to simplify the pension system (which is notoriously complex in the UK). Before that, the “old” State Pension broadly fell into two categories – the “basic” State Pension, and the “additional” State Pension. Under these rules, you could…
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