Make 6.25% instantly with no investment returns required You put £2,880.00 into a pension. The government top it up with £720.00 Total £3,600 Take it straight back out again. 25% tax free cash = £900 £2,700 drawn flexibly, if you are a basic rate taxpayer = tax of £540.00 Net payment £2,160 plus the £900 tax free cash = £3,060.00. That’s a 6.25% instant return. e) Accessing Your Pension If you haven’t utilised all of your personal allowance (£12,570 for 2022/23), you could draw down on some of your pension in order to maximise this allowance. Current rules allow you th to access your pensions from age 55. This increases to 57 from 6 April 2028. Remember, when you access your pension in a flexible manner (the taxable element of the plan and not just the tax-free cash), you will activate the ‘money purchase annual allowance,’ which means you can only reinvest £4,000pa gross into a money purchase pension which could cause an issue if you are still working and contributing to a pension. Be careful and take advice. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reducing-the-money-purchase-annual- allowance/reducing-the-money-purchase-annual-allowance f) State Pension Changes. Missing NI contributions – Check and top up your state pension whilst you still can – deadline April 2023 *For men born after 5 April 1951 and women born after 5 April 1953. If that’s you, then read on. If you were born before this, then you are on the older system. What’s this all about? th The new flat rate of state pension started on the 6 April 2016 and the amount you get depends on how many qualifying years you have. On the old system which consisted of a basic state pension and a top up dependent on things such as SERPs and contracting out, you needed to have 30 qualifying years and the level of pension in some cases was dependent on levels of earnings in the past. On the new system, everyone can get a flat rate of state pension but as a starting point you need to have 35 qualifying years as a minimum. Now for those who started their NI record before 2016, it’s not as simple, as some of your record is based on the old system and some on the new system. For anyone in this position, there are transitional arrangements in place. These mean you can pay to ‘plug the gaps’ for any gaps in your record as far back as 2006. However, this