🎓 10 years from retirement? Your planning checklist
Published July 20, 2026 by Andrew Marker, Vanguard Europe's Head of Retail Pensions, this is a retirement-planning checklist for people roughly a decade from retiring. Key steps include opening a pension if you don't have one (contributions get topped up by government tax relief, e.g., £80 in becomes £100), tracking down and consolidating lost workplace pensions, and using Vanguard's pension calculator to check savings are on track. It highlights the 2026-27 auto-enrolment minimum of 8% and shows raising contributions to 7%/7% on a £50,000 salary could add roughly £3,000/year. It also covers shifting portfolio risk toward bonds/cash near retirement, income options like flexible drawdown and the £268,275 tax-free lump-sum cap, and tax-efficient sequencing across pensions, ISAs, and general investment accounts ahead of new ISA rules starting April 2027.
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