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Wouldn’t that be something!

It has always amazed me that a middle of the road party doesn’t prevail eg Lib Dem’s rather than left or right. Or far left/ right. But people ( sheeple?} vote with the herd. Everyone was fed up of the tories so voted labour. Nect they will vote reform cos fed up of labour.

People tend to lean left or right, so a middle of the road party only pleases the idealistic few.

From my research it's actually be advisable not to take the 25% - I'm in a simple world with just a single pension pot.

Huh? Why? It makes no difference when you take the 25% tax free. It's always tax free (well unless/until the chancellor changes the rules). I'm yet to hear a convincing reason NOT to take the full 25% TFLS from defined contribution pots.

The argument is different for defined benefit (aka DB/Final Salary) pots, because you usually have to commute some of the annual income in exchange for a lump sum. In those instances you have to work out the commutation rate. Would you prefer £10K p/a for life or £8K p/a for life and a £25K lump sum?

What I've read is that 25% is for the life of your pension, you don't need to take it in one go.

40% threshold is ~£50k

So pay yourself ~£49k from your pension pots (paying ~20% tax)

Then top up your income from your 25% tax free lump sump, say £15k over the course of the year.

So you get a £65k pension and only pay 20% tax.

You only ever pay 20% tax and over the course of your entire pension that would save far more.

It all depends on what are called 'crystallisation' events.

Say you have a £1M pot. You can.....

1) Crystallise £50K, and take 25% tax free, and then take the remaining 75% as 'income' an pay tax at 20/40/45%. You leave the remaining £950K inside the uncrystallised pension wrapper.
2) Crystallise £50K, and take 25% tax free, and leave the 75% inside the pension as 'crystallized' funds.  You leave the remaining £950K inside the uncrystallised pension wrapper.
3) Crystallise all £1M, and take 25% tax free, and leave the 75% inside the pension as 'crystallized' funds.

What you cannot do is crystallise £50K, but take 25% TFLS of the whole £1M pot. You can only take 25% of whatever you crystallise. Once it's crystallised, you can't take any further TFLS from the crystallised portion of the pot.

On the tax point, if you crystallise (approx) £66K, then the TFLS part of that will be £16K5, leaving £50K exposed to income tax. You have a £12.5K personal allowance, so will pay 20% on £37K5, which is £7.5K. Therefore, you will receive £58K5 into your bank account, and pay £7.5K tax - an effective tax rate of 12.8%.   

Wouldn’t that be something!

It has always amazed me that a middle of the road party doesn’t prevail eg Lib Dem’s rather than left or right. Or far left/ right. But people ( sheeple?} vote with the herd. Everyone was fed up of the tories so voted labour. Nect they will vote reform cos fed up of labour.

If they play their cards right the Limp Dums could be the official opposition! 

Reform / Tory coalition is my prediction - but it is (or should be) a long time away yet.
I cant imagine the circumstances where Labour would get a second term.

The problem now is that both the (alleged) main parties are total sh!t. That makes Reform an attractive option, but the left wing woke brigade will have a melt down with that. I can see the next General Election getting very toxic.

There is a lot of spinning to be done between now and a possible general election. Currently the polls are pretty even though Reform are above the others. Hung parliament? Difficult to get anything done. Of course a lot can change including Europe at war with Russia.

Apparently there's a big demo arranged on September the 13th in London about all the nonsense surrounding the illegals & the government in general, the way things are heading it could all turn out very nasty but I'm not surprised one bit. I've never known a prime minister like Starmer in all my life in fact the whole bunch are a total waste of space.

The problem now is that both the (alleged) main parties are total sh!t. That makes Reform an attractive option, but the left wing woke brigade will have a melt down with that. I can see the next General Election getting very toxic.

Sounds like you're starting again

Assuming you are using Mrs Opti's laptop from the same internet connection as yours, it will be your device settings.  Such as VPN as Sir Tig mentioned (don't bother with a VPN, that type offer nothing unless you are trying to access geolocation limited), or cookies or caching.