Guides
Questions about tax and pensions in retirement
Short answers to what people ask most, with the figures for this tax year and where each one comes from.
How much a retirement needs
What a retirement costs and how long it may last, what people have saved by each age and how the State Pension rises.
- How much do I need to retire? The Retirement Living StandardsPensions UK puts a yearly cost on three ways of living in retirement. The latest figures for one person and for two, and what they leave out.
- How likely am I to reach 80, 90 or 100?The chance of reaching each age from 65 to 100 for men and women in the UK, from the ONS’s official projections, and what they leave out.
- What is the average pension pot by age in Great Britain?What people of each age held in their pensions, from the Office for National Statistics, and who the figures leave out.
- How much is the State Pension?The full new State Pension this tax year, the qualifying years behind it, how to check your record, and what filling a gap costs and adds.
- What is the State Pension triple lock, and what changes in April 2030?How the State Pension rises each April, the change the government has announced for April 2030, and where that change stands.
Reducing costs in retirement
The costs that carry on after work stops, and what spending on solar panels now does to the bills later.
- What costs carry on after you stop earning?Ten costs that carry on after earning stops, from timeshares and leasehold flats to car finance, subscriptions and energy, and what the rules say about each.
- How long do home solar panels take to pay for themselves?What government figures say about the cost and saving of home solar panels in Great Britain, the payback they imply, and what changes it.
Tax on pensions and savings
How a pension is taxed when drawn, taken as cash or passed on, how gifts count for inheritance tax, and how an ISA compares.
- How is pension income taxed in each UK nation?A pension is taxed at the income tax rates of the nation you live in. The 2026/27 bands for each, with the official source behind every figure.
- How much of a pension can you take as a tax-free lump sum?Up to 25% of a pension can usually come out free of income tax, to a limit of £268,275. When you can take it, and the two ways to take it.
- Do pensions pay inheritance tax? What changes in April 2027From 6 April 2027, most unspent pension money will count towards the estate for inheritance tax. What changes, what stays outside, and who pays.
- How much can you give away free of inheritance tax?How gifts leave an estate free of inheritance tax, what happens if the giver dies within seven years, and gifts to a child through a Junior ISA or a pension.
- Pension or ISA: what does each do with the same pound?What each wrapper does with the same pound: tax at opposite ends, what a pension adds, what an ISA keeps open, the yearly limits, and what is changing.
How investments grow
What compounding does over decades, what a workplace pension holds, and what the evidence says about trading often, timing the market and crypto.
- What is compounding, and what does it do over time?Growth earned on earlier growth, shown three ways: two savers who start ten years apart, a debt beside a saving, and what inflation takes.
- What is your workplace pension invested in?What the default fund in a workplace pension holds, the path it sets for a young member, what it charges beside other funds, and where to find each of those.
- What does frequent trading cost, even in low-cost funds?The costs of a buy and a sell that a fund’s yearly charge leaves out: dealing fees, the spread, currency, Stamp Duty Reserve Tax, a levy and capital gains.
- Why is timing the market so hard?Timing the market takes two right calls, when to sell and when to buy back. Why the second is the hard one, what a round trip costs, and where tax comes in.
- Why isn’t crypto treated as a core retirement asset?Crypto’s short price record, its changing link to shares and the protections it sits outside: why UK regulators call it high risk rather than a core asset.
Seeking advice and help
What a financial adviser asks before advising, and how someone can manage money for a partner who no longer can.
- What will a financial adviser ask you before advising on retirement?The three things a regulated adviser must know before recommending anything, where reviews of retirement advice found gaps, and the questions beyond money.
- Where do you start planning for retirement?Allowances, a modelled plan, a written record of intentions and expert advice each do a job the others cannot. How the layers fit together.
- Who can manage a partner’s money when they no longer can?What a power of attorney does for a couple, the document each part of the UK uses, and what happens without one.
Pension calculator
Will your pension be enough?Type in your salary, your pot and when you want to stop work, and see what they could pay you a year for life.Budget calculator
How much more tax will you pay after the 2026 Budget?Type in your salary and see what the frozen thresholds add to your tax each year.How we work
How Landfall works out your numbersWhere every figure comes from, how we check it, and what the model leaves out.See your own year
Will your money last?
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