1. Make sure you have contacted all of your old employers - send us a list of the companies you have worked for and we will check whether you are entitled to any extra pension from them.
2. Get a state pension forecast - phone us if you want the contact details to check how much state pension you are due and whether you can top it up.
3. Defer your state pension - this might increase the state pension you are entiled to considerably - contact us if you need advice on whether this is right for you.

We are receiving an increasing number of enquiries for advice on what to do with a number of individual pension plans - typical situations might be:

From October 2012 it is planned that all eligible workers, who are not already in a good quality workplace scheme, will begin to be automatically enrolled into either their employers’ pension scheme or a new ’national’ pension scheme, now known as NEST (National Employment Savings Trust).

You really need to act now to get real benefit from these changes. I have prepared some specific information for our clients to brief them about the changes and what they should do.

State Pension ages are currently set to increase to 68 for men and women.

Currently, the State Pension age is 65 for men and 60 for women, but from 5th April this year (2010) over the next 10 years, the state pension ages for both men and women will be brought into line gradually so that both men and women's retirement ages will be 65.

But it doesn't end there!

Between 2024 and 2046 the State Pension age will increase for both men and women.
This increase will also be gradual, happening over two years every decade.

This will mean that:

We recently had a client with an extreme case of "pension apathy". He knew he should have done something but never got round to it.

He left it so late to do anything that all we could say was that he was going to have to be extremely frugal in his old age.

It was a real tragedy. The state pension will certainly not improve his life for him after retirement - if he ever can.

A free initial consultation is what we offer to get you moving in the right direction, and that is certainly cheaper than doing nothing! A bargain!

Aviva have published their first "Real Retirement Report" which outlines a major problem for those wanting to retire.

The findings of their report are really very worrying...