8 September 2025
The state pension - everything you need to knowThe state pension forms a big part of lots of people’s retirement plans, with the money helping to bolster any income from personal or company pensions. But with the age being extended and worries about the rising cost of it for the government, there are concerns it could be trimmed back.
For those nearing retirement it’s important to know all the...
3 September 2025
When can I access my pension?Many of us start saving into a pension from the age of 22 or even earlier. This is the age from which your employer usually has to automatically enrol you into a pension scheme. If you choose to pay into a pension, then your employer also has to chip in with their own contributions.
It’s natural that as you start to approach retirement you will...
14 August 2025
Is dividend tax taking a toll on your gains?The number of people that will pay tax on their dividends across all income brackets has doubled over the past four tax years as the dividend allowance shrinks.
While the allowance used to be £2,000, it has now fallen to just £500, with the rest categorised as income. Now, 3.7 million people are paying tax on their dividends, and it’s not just...
11 August 2025
How much can savers have before hitting their tax-free limit?Even though the Bank of England cut interest rates this week, millions of savers will still be hit with a tax bill for their savings interest.
Our FOI this week showed that one in 15 taxpayers are expected to pay some tax on their savings in the current tax year. And HMRC estimates that Brits will earn around £20 billion from interest on non-ISA...
11 August 2025
Government highlights ‘chronic’ pension crisis: do you have enough to retire?More than two-fifths of working-age Brits are under-saving for retirement, equating to 14.6 million people, according to new figures from the Department for Work and Pensions.
The data found that fewer than 1-in-4 people are on course to hit trade body Pensions UK’s ‘comfortable’ retirement income level, and more than 1-in-10 won’t even reach the...
5 August 2025
Are you owed back tax on your pension? HMRC quirk eating into retirees’ incomeRetirees making flexible withdrawals from their pension have been temporarily shortchanged by nearly £1.5bn due to a quirk in HMRC’s systems.
New figures showed that in April, May and June this year Brits reclaimed £49 million of money where they have overpaid tax on their pension withdrawals. During the period nearly 13,000 reclaim forms were...
25 July 2025
How to make gifts from your pension incomeFrom 6 April 2027, pensions will be included in your estate for inheritance tax (IHT) purposes. There’s no doubt this aims to raise tax revenue, but the government clearly wants to encourage people to use their pensions in retirement, rather than leaving them untouched as a way of passing on wealth free of inheritance tax.
In this article, I’ll...
25 July 2025
Government confirms pensions will face inheritance tax: everything you need to knowThe government has confirmed it will press ahead with plans that mean most unused pensions will be subject to inheritance tax from April 2027.
How you are affected will depend on the value of your pension when you die, your other assets and who you plan to leave them to.
The government expects the changes to impact 8% of estates. While that is a...
24 July 2025
Why you may have to wait longer to claim the state pensionThe government has launched a new review of the state pension age, which may mean that it rises to the age of 68 sooner than planned.
Currently both men and women can claim the state pension from the age of 66, but this is already planned to rise to 67 and to 68 for future pensioners. However, the government has launched the third review of the...
4 July 2025
What voters think of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ tax rises after a year in officeSubjecting unused pension funds to inheritance tax (IHT) on death is the most unpopular tax measure announced by the government since entering office, according to a new survey* conducted on behalf of AJ Bell
Just a fifth of Brits (21%) say they support the pension IHT policy, due to come into force from April 2027, while 44% say they’re against...
17 June 2025
Gifting money: how inheritance tax works on different assetsLabour’s 2024 Budget contained proposals to bring more assets into the clutches of inheritance tax (IHT) for the first time as well as an extended freeze of the tax-free allowances and thresholds. Currently around one in 20 estates pay IHT, but this is expected to narrow to one in 10 by the end of this parliament.
What is in my estate?Your ‘estate...
17 June 2025
Planning your income for retirementYou’ve spent your working life building up your savings and investments across different pension, investment accounts and ISAs. When the time comes, it’s worth having an eye on the way different income sources are taxed.
By understanding how your tax-free allowances, you can make your wealth last longer through retirement and keep more of what you...
21 May 2025
Tracking down your lost pension: Where does it go?In the UK, there is currently £31bn in assets floating around in unclaimed pension pots. But what happens when these assets aren’t reclaimed by their owners?
Pension providers will make every effort to reunite lost pots with their owners, but ultimately lost pensions can go into the Dormant Assets Scheme, where they may eventually be donated to...
20 May 2025
The UK has over £31bn in lost pensions: can combining pots help?There is over £31 billion* in unclaimed pension pots floating around the UK, a number exacerbated by frequent career changes and workers being automatically placed in a pension scheme.
The automatic enrolment workplace pension scheme has been touted as one of the most successful projects by government in recent years. In 2012, when auto enrolment...
20 May 2025
How cutting charges can boost your pension pot by over £50,000Pensions come with great tax perks to help boost your retirement savings, including sheltering the investments you hold in a pension from tax. But high pension charges can eat into your overall returns. And just like investment returns, the impact of higher charges on your pension pot can compound over time.
How much could you save by making sure...
20 May 2025
Could you have £959,729 in lost pensions?There are 3.3 million lost pension pots, according to the Pensions Policy Institute, as people have moved jobs, lost paperwork or forgotten their pension existed. But what if you had 11 missing pension pots you could track down, or a pension worth £959,729 sitting there waiting to be found?
That’s what some people discovered when using our pension...
20 May 2025
Four ways to build a pension and keep your retirement savings strategy on trackIt’s never too early to plan for the cost of retirement and the amount of money you need to save. Even if you’re 20 or 30 years away from giving up work, the sooner you get your strategy in place, the easier it might be to squirrel away money so you can enjoy your golden years without financial stress.
In the future you’ll look back and be thankful...
20 May 2025
Am I saving enough for retirement?Determining how much you need to save for retirement in your pension can be a tricky calculation because it involves a lot of unknowns.
Just 18% of people have a figure for how much they believe they will need for retirement, and only 20% are confident they are saving enough, according to the Pension & Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA).
By...
16 May 2025
One third of adults have less than £10,000 in their pensionA large chunk of the UK population is setting themselves up for a nasty shock later in life by not putting enough money away for the future.
The newly published Financial Lives survey by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a financial regulator, implies that certain people will be too reliant on the state pension to pay the bills and support...
29 April 2025
Government to press ahead with plans to consolidate small pension potsAutomatic enrolment is one of the big public policy success stories of our time. But it’s not without its flaws. People start a pension when they join an employer, but when they switch employer, they often leave their old pension behind, neglected and unloved. This has created a plethora of small pension pots which are easily forgotten.
Confirmatio...
16 April 2025
How market drops could affect your pensionWhen markets fall, a simple solution for most pension investors can be to ride it out. Historically, prices have recovered, and if your plans for retirement are still far away you likely have time to wait.
But when you’re in the final years before retiring or have already retired and started accessing your pension, a tumble in your investments can...
9 April 2025
Why savers and retirees shouldn’t panic in the face of Trump tariffs turmoilThe US President’s actions over the last week haven’t exactly been calming for global stock markets, with huge falls recorded across indices from the Dow Jones to the Hang Seng and the FTSE in the UK. This instability can be deeply unsettling for savers and retirees, who may log in to their pension and see a big fall in the value of their fund. But...
28 March 2025
Navigating a decade of pension freedomsNext month we will be lighting the candles on the cake celebrating 10 years of pension freedoms. George Osborne’s 2014 Budget bombshell was a dramatic initiative which ripped up the rulebook on annuities and gave people more control over how they access their pension savings.
In the biggest pensions shake-up in a generation, government relaxed some...
21 March 2025
Pensions in the spotlight as UK life expectancy ticks upFor decades it was taken as a given that life expectancy would continue increasing for each generation. However, even prior to the pandemic, life expectancy improvements had ground to a halt. Despite a very marginal improvement in 2021-2023, average lifespans have still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Life expectancy trends are important to...
18 February 2025
Are you one of the 20 million people with a lost pension?There has been a boom in the number of small pension pots in the UK, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found. There were around 20 million defined contribution pension pots valued under £10,000 in 2023 which are no longer being topped up and are worth a total of almost £30 billion, according to an IFS report.
The think tank claims over...
