Will your pensions pay for the life you want? Almost nobody knows, because nobody has added them up.
We find everything you hold, including the schemes from jobs you left years ago, project what each will produce, and put that next to what your retirement will cost.
That arithmetic is free, and it is where every pension conversation here starts.
2026/27 rules. Pension tax rules change regularly, and the penalties for getting them wrong land on you.
The gap between those first two numbers matters a great deal when you are planning the shape of your income, because it is the stretch you have to fund yourself. Once you have flexibly accessed a pension a much lower annual allowance applies to anything you pay in afterwards, so the order you do things in can be worth a lot.
Each has its own rules on what you can pay in and how you take money out.
Pension benefits and the tax treatment of them depend on your circumstances and on current rules, which can change. Accessing benefits can have lasting tax and income consequences.
Almost never. People assume retirement costs less, and for most it does not. The mortgage may go and the commute disappears, then travel, hobbies and having seven days a week to fill take their place.
Even if you already have a workplace or private pension, an additional arrangement may add usefully to your retirement income. Whether it does is arithmetic, and we will do it with you before you pay anything.
Usually. Between the government's Pension Tracing Service, old payslips and P60s, and direct enquiries to former employers and their schemes, most pensions can be traced. It is one of the most common things we do at the health-check stage and one of the most frequently rewarding.
Start from the assumption that you should not. A defined benefit scheme is a promise of an inflation-linked income for life, and giving that up cannot be undone.
Transfers of safeguarded benefits above £30,000 require specialist advice by law, and in the great majority of cases staying put is the right answer. Where it genuinely is not, you will see the reasoning.
There is no figure that works for everybody. Yours depends on what you intend to do with your time, your health, what else you own, and whether you plan to stop completely. Working it out is the first substantial thing we do together.
Most modern pensions are paid at the scheme's discretion, guided by your expression-of-wish form. If that form is missing or out of date the money may not follow your intentions. We check them as a matter of routine and the correction usually takes ten minutes.
Yes, within limits, and there is tax relief available even on contributions made with no earned income at all, up to a modest annual amount. Once you have flexibly accessed a pension a much lower annual allowance applies to future contributions, so the order of events matters.
Whether your pensions will cover the retirement you want, and by how much they miss.
Longer answers to the questions that come up most on this subject.
Tell us what is on your mind: a pension you have lost track of, a fixed rate ending, a will you keep meaning to write. We will tell you honestly whether we can help.