Disclaimer: Our website and publications aim to give you general information to help you make financial decisions. It is not advice, nor can it take account of your own particular circumstances. For advice with a view to making decisions about your own circumstances you should consult a financial or other professional adviser.

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Retiring soon

If you're thinking of retiring soon, you'll want to find out where your retirement income will be coming from and how much it will be. You'll also have a number of choices available to you – maybe more than you think. (In this site, we use the word retirement to mean the time from when you start to take the benefits from your pension.)

You can take your retirement income from age 50 but this is going up to 55 by 2010. Some pension schemes may have additional rules about when you can take your benefits – check with your scheme provider.

If you're thinking of retiring early, bear in mind that your pension will have had less time to build up and may be paid out for longer, so you could be living on a lower income than you might expect.

You don't have to stop work to start drawing a personal or stakeholder pension. You can draw a pension from your employer's occupational scheme and carry on working so long as the scheme rules allow this. For more details see our Retiring soon guide. You can download or order it online from Publications.

Use our two easy steps below to help you take stock of all the issues.

Step 1: Take stock

Use our information to help you work out what pension plans and other sources of income you have.

Go to step 1 >

Step 2: Take action

Once you know where your income is coming from, you can take control to make more of your money.

Go to step 2 >

Do

  1. Review all the income you're likely to get from all sources – for example, pension plans, savings, investments, insurance policies or benefits
  2. Use the services available to help you
    • trace lost pensions, bank or building society accounts or other investments
    • get an idea of how much State pension you'll get
  3. Shop around for annuities, savings accounts and other investments with Compare products

Don't

  1. Put off your retirement planning – the sooner you know where you stand, the sooner you can get things sorted out if you need to
  2. Forget to think about your partner and dependants (if any) when making financial arrangements
  3. Expect pension providers to automatically track you down to pay your pension. Make it easier for them and you by getting in touch