The Retirement Newsletter: What did I learn from my Pension Wise meeting?

Issue Number: -19 — Was the Pension Wise meeting helpful?

Photo by Author — fading into the sunset — planning for retirement

Welcome

Welcome to issue -19 — What did I learn from my Pension Wise meeting? And was it worth 50 minutes of my time?

What is Pension Wise?

Pension Wise is a free service the UK government offers for people about to retire. The service consists of a website and a free 60-minute face-to-face or over-the-phone interview and is a service from MoneyHelper.

I opted for the phone.

For the meeting, they need to know what type of pension you have — defined contribution, career average or final salary. Hence you need to collect all your information together.

My meeting was with a very nice chap and lasted 50 minutes.

At the start of the meeting, he pointed out that it was not financial advice.

At the end of the meeting, I was sent a link to a document containing much of the material we covered in the meeting.

What did we discuss?

OK, first off, I would like to say that I am not a financial advisor. I am writing about what I have read over the years…