Pensions are designed to provide you with sufficient money to live comfortably after you have retired from work. The big plus for pension savings is the upfront tax relief. For every £100 a basic-rate tax payer pays in, the taxman will add an extra £25. If you are a higher rate taxpayer you can claim considerably more through your pay coding.

We specialise in thoroughly researching the whole market then explaining the options to you clearly before recommending the best product for you.

The Basic State Pension
For people who have paid sufficient National Insurance contributions while at work or have been credited with enough contributions.

How much is the basic State Pension?

In 2009-2010 the full basic State Pension is £95.25 a week. The full basic State Pension for a married woman using her husband's National Insurance record is £57.05 a week. This means that a married couple could get separate basic State Pension payments totalling £152.50 a week. In all circumstances your individual circumstances may effect the amount you get. A State Pension forecast will tell you the current value of your State Pension and the amount you may get at State Pension age.

Additional State Pension
This is now the State Second Pension (S2P) Before 6 April 2002 you built up SERPS (State Earnings Related Pension Scheme) benefits. From 6 April 2002 SERPS was changed so creating a more generous additional State Pension for low and moderate earnings, carers and people with long term illness or disability. This is now known as the State Second Pension. This is based upon earnings on which standard rate class 1 National Insurance contributions are paid or treated as having being paid.

Phased Retirement
As the heading says it allows the purchase of a Pension to be phased, allowing flexibility. Pensions can be set up as a single plan or as a cluster of separate plans sometimes referred to as Segments. Each year a level of income is needed, clusters need to be cashed in. You can use these segments to buy Annuities or Unsecured Pension plans.

Each time you convert a segment you can take part of the funds as Tax free cash. The drawback of this is that you cannot take all of your Tax free lump sum from your Pension pot as a single payment, only part of it as you cash in your segments.

By taking income from your pension, this way you are relying on investment growth to replace part or all of the income you are taking.

Careful consideration must be taken if choosing this option and we recommend you seek advice.

Regular Reviews
With the economic climate changing regularly Pensions should be constantly reviewed. With the demise of a lot of the Pension companies, people are now not being regularly reviewed to see what their attitude to risk is or if they are being charged too much for archaic Pension funds.

We offer a service which can identify if your present Pension Provider is charging you too much and if you might be better off switching to another company. Some providers now even offer a range of guarantees for your Pension fund.

 For further advice please contact us.