Retirement Income Strategy
Once you've accessed your pension, the harder question begins: how do you turn several pots of money — state pension, workplace pensions, savings, maybe a bit of part-time income — into a reliable income that lasts as long as you need it to? Sequencing these sources well, managing the risk of poor investment returns arriving at the wrong time, and structuring withdrawals sustainably is a genuinely complex topic, and this hub breaks it down into four practical guides: building a plan from scratch, deciding when to take your state pension relative to drawdown, understanding sequencing risk, and using the bucket strategy to put it all into practice.
Why this is worth getting right: two retirees can have identical pension pots and identical average investment returns, yet end up in very different financial positions purely because of how they sequenced their income and managed risk along the way. A thoughtful income strategy doesn't remove uncertainty from retirement, but it does turn a vague worry — "will my money last?" — into a specific, reviewable plan you can check and adjust as circumstances change. The four guides below take this from theory into practice, starting with building your own plan and finishing with a concrete strategy for putting it into action.
How to Create a Retirement Income Plan
A step-by-step framework for listing your income sources, splitting essential from discretionary spending, and working out the gap you need drawdown to fill.
When to Take State Pension vs Drawdown First
The case for deferring your state pension against the case for claiming it as soon as you can, with a worked side-by-side comparison.
Sequencing Risk in Retirement Explained
Why the order of investment returns, not just their average, can make or break how long your retirement savings last.
The Bucket Strategy for Retirement Income
Splitting your pot into short, medium and long-term buckets to manage risk and give near-term spending a safe home.
Before you can build an income strategy, you first need to know your options for actually accessing your pension. Our accessing your pension hub covers tax-free lump sums, drawdown, annuities, and the rules around when and how you can start taking money out.