You don’t have to retire to start taking your money out of now:pensions. At the moment you can start taking it once you’re 55. This age goes up to 57 in 2028. 

You do have a planned retirement age in now:pensions. We assume it’s your State Pension age if you haven’t told us anything different. Check your State Pension age now.

This is important because your planned retirement age affects how your money is invested as you get closer to retiring. If we don’t use the right age, your investments won’t work in the way they should. You could miss out on some retirement income.  

To check or change your planned retirement age, log in to now:u and go to Investments > Personalise your plan. On the Choose your plan page, choose See details.  

Below the details of the charges you’ll see your current planned retirement age. Use the plus or minus signs to change the age to the one you want.  

Firstly – you usually need to be at least 55 (57 from 6 April 2028).

You may be able to take your pension savings earlier if you’re suffering from ill health.

Read our guide to learn more on how to take your pension savings.

The earlier, the better. It’s never too early.  

• The more you plan, the more likely you are to get the kind of retirement you want.  
• And the longer your pension savings have to build up, the more money you’re likely to have when you retire.  

Read more about planning your retirement here.

With now:u, you can plan your retirement whenever you want. now:u always shows the projected value of your pension savings at your planned retirement age.  

Log in to now:u and go to Plan your retirement. You can play around with our retirement planner to see how paying more in to your pension savings or changing your planned retirement age changes the projected value of your pension savings.  

You can also use the planner to see how long your money is likely to last after you retire.  

MoneyHelper and Pension Wise 

The government-backed MoneyHelper service offers free, impartial guidance about a whole range of money matters including budgeting, money troubles, savings and pensions. Trained experts are available to help by phone and webchat. 

MoneyHelper includes Pension Wise, a service for people over 50 that explains your options for taking money out of your pension savings.  You can chat to pension experts on the website.

If you’re over 50 you can make an appointment for a guidance call. This can either be a call with a pensions expert, or a self-guided appointment online.

Calls last about an hour.

The self-guided appointment is expected to last about 30 minutes, but you can save it at any time and come back to it later.

• Book a Pension Wise appointment online.
• Book your appointment by phone on 0800 138 3944.
• Or, we can book your Pension Wise appointment for you. Contact us.

Citizens Advice 

Citizens Advice is a charity offering confidential help and advice to help people sort out their problems, including money and debt. 

Regulated financial advice  

The organisations we’ve listed so far offer guidance. They don’t give specific advice, tailored to you, recommending what you should do. You can only get this kind of advice from an adviser who’s regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). You usually have to pay for regulated financial advice and it can seem expensive, but it could be money well spent if it gives you a better retirement.

The MoneyHelper website has a guide to choosing a financial adviser and a directory of advisers who can give regulated financial advice about pensions.

The Personal Finance Society (PFS) has a What we do for the public section, including a directory you can filter to find advisers that specialise in giving regulated financial advice about retirement planning.

The FCA has a register of financial services firms regulated in the UK. You should check any adviser you’re thinking of using appears on this register as authorised to give advice on pensions.

You can find the retirement planner in now:u. Follow the steps in our guide to learn how to do this.

You can take some or all your pension savings as cash. A quarter will be tax free and the rest will be taxable. You can take all your pension savings as cash at once, or take cash in chunks.  

If you’re thinking of taking cash in chunks, you can use the retirement planner to see how long your money could last. Log in to now:u and go to Plan my retirement.  

Or, you can transfer your pension savings out of now:pensions. This could give you more options for retirement income.  

Check out more information on your retirement options here.

To help people think about how much they might need to retire on, the Pension and Lifetime Savings Association has come up with simple estimates of how much retirement income you need for different standards of living.

There’s lots more detail on the Retirement Living Standards website.

Remember your State Pension
The State Pension is a pension the government pays you when you reach your State Pension age. We assume your planned retirement age is the same as your State Pension age, until you tell us something different.

The amount of State Pension you get depends on your National Insurance record – the contributions you’ve paid, and the credits you’ve received, during your working life.

Find out more about the State Pension here.

Yes. You need to be suffering from ‘serious ill health’ which means a qualified medical practitioner – usually your GP – has confirmed your life expectancy is less than 12 months. 

If you’re under 75 

You can take all your pension savings as cash straight away, regardless of your age.   

The cash will be tax free – you won’t pay any income tax on it.  

If you’re over 75 

You can still take all your pension savings as cash. If you’ve already started taking your pension savings as retirement income, you can take any savings you’ve got left as cash straight away.  

But, you’ll be liable to pay income tax on the cash.   

This is because the way pensions are taxed changes at age 75. How much tax you pay will depend on what other income you get in that tax year. We’ll take tax off before we pay the money to you.  

Your planned retirement age is the age you think you’re likely to start taking your pension savings. We’ll use your State Pension age unless you tell us something else. This will be based on the date of birth your workplace has given us.

Please check your date of birth to make sure your workplace has given us the right date. Please also check your planned retirement age.

You can change your planned retirement age at any time. Login to now:u. Go to Personalise your plan. On the Choose your plan page, choose See details.

Below the details of the charges you’ll see your current planned retirement age. Use the plus or minus signs to change the age to the one you want.

This depends on how you plan to take your money out of now:pensions.  

If you’re taking cash, this normally takes a few days to reach your bank account once we’ve done all our checks and processing.  

Transferring your pension savings out generally takes a bit longer. It won’t take as long if the pension provider you’re transferring to uses Origo, an industry-standard automated service that allows pension schemes to communicate directly with each other.  

If they don’t use Origo, you’ll need to: 

• download a transfer pack 

• fill in the forms 

• send some of the forms to your pension provider to fill in and send back to you, and 

• send all the forms to us.  

If you’re in now:pensions, nothing changes. You and your workplace can carry on paying in to your pension savings. Nothing will change until you decide to do something – for example, you start taking your money out of now:pensions or transfer your pension savings out to another pension scheme.

If you’re not in now:pensions, you can ask to join until you reach age 75. You’ll start paying in to your pension savings. Your workplace will also pay in, as long as you earn more than £6,240 a year. If you earn less than this your workplace doesn’t have to pay in.