Steve Webb answers your pension questions here

House prices are soaring and mortgage terms are getting longer – so it is little wonder that fewer borrowers expect to have paid off their mortgage by the time they retire.

Taking a five-year career break to look after ill or frail relatives can set you back £150,000, if you earn the UK average annual income of around £29,000.

Former Pensions Minister Steve is This is Money’s Agony Uncle. Here’s where you can check out all his previous columns to see if any involve issues affecting you.

Does your granny, grandad, mum, dad, auntie, uncle, friend or neighbour struggle to make ends meet? Ros Altmann, campaigner and former Pensions Minister, explains how to help them.

I have triggered the money purchase annual allowance, giving me only a £4,000 tax free pension allowance a year going forward. I have now got a Government job with a defined benefit pension.

Savers collect a string of pension pots during their working lives but only one in four have merged any of them, new research reveals.

In the generation now approaching retirement, which has not had time to reap the full benefits of auto enrolment, women have around £43,000 in private pensions and men have around £82,000.

Private equity firms buying up care homes should face stringent tests before being able to ‘extract dividends and profit’, the boss of one of the biggest chains in the sector said last night.

A lot of women are understandably asking if they missed out on thousands of pounds in state pension, and we explain how to find out and what to do if you are owed money by the DWP.

Families and friends who have a loved one living with dementia are being urged to consider the unexpected financial risks that can come with the disease.

Older homeowners using equity release are taking an average of £100,000 out thanks to house price increases – but high interest means some say it should be a ‘last resort’.

The reputation of the so far hugely successful auto enrolment initiative to get people saving for old age could suffer a huge hit if workers belatedly found their entire pots had been eaten by fees.

A fifth of people say their parents definitely haven’t made preparations or drawn up any documents relating to their death, according to research by the investing platform Hargreaves Lansdown.

Thousands of homeowners with snowballing equity release debts could be paying over the odds and seeing debt rack up faster than it needs to.

Financial advisers say clients are increasingly concerned about how they may be able to pay for care while research found just three in ten people had set aside cash or had a plan to fund later-life care.

A number of women received phone calls from the Parliamentary Ombudsman, telling them it will not intervene in decisions to only hand them a one-year backpayment.

Some people saving into pensions may be facing a retirement catastrophe because they are being given a wrong idea of what money they are likely to require for old age, claims one firm.

I have had a look around and seen lots of over-50s products. Is there anything that makes this kind of life insurance better for someone over 50?

Automatic enrolment into workplace pension schemes does not currently encourage contribution rates that rise with age, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says.

My husband is 87 and in a private care home with acute dementia. I registered Power of Attorney last year. I requested that money held in my husband’s account be transferred to mine.

Analysis reveals that more than 250,000 people over 70 are not collecting any state pension whatsoever. Yet many will be entitled to claim at least £82.45 a week – simply because they are over 80.

A report by Interactive Investor and LCP suggests these projections could be wildly optimistic. What’s more, there is little consistency in how pension providers calculate projections.

Usually it charges a registration fee of £30 to hold this information but until June 4 it will provide its service for free. There are no other charges.

It believes too many councils are not classifying those hit by Alzheimer’s as having a severe mental impairment. As a result, households are missing out on a 25 per cent discount on council tax.

As many as one in eight workers aged over 50 cut their pension payments due to the financial pressures of Covid-19. If they reinstate payments now, the impact will still be contained.

One in five retired people have explored putting savings in financial products they would not normally consider to get a higher rate of return, new research reveals.

Equity release is now a better product than it ever has been. But we should not forget about those who took on a loan when rates were in excess of 6 per cent. Their debt has been compounding ever since.

Families are using a legal document called a deed of variation which allows them to alter the beneficiaries of a will. It can also help to dramatically reduce inheritance tax bills.

Standard Life Aberdeen says a retiree would need a pension pot of around £390,000 on top of their state pension income to cover the £21,000 spend over 30 years.

There is no set age limit for when a person must legally stop driving and as such, the onus is very much on your father to take responsibility for that decision himself.

My 59-year-old cousin died suddenly last July without leaving a will. He never married, nor did he have any siblings, a legal partnership or children. He lived all of his life with his mother.

The Pensionbee app, founded by former banker Romi Savova (pictured), has been praised by some personal finance experts for its user-friendly interface and simple fee structure.

Homecare policyholders say they had been unable to get appointments for repairs in good time, despite spending hundreds of pounds on the boiler cover plans each year.

An 80-year-old lost her husband last August, but though his state pension stopped immediately she was denied a rise from £87 to £209 a week for half a year.

Steve Webb has helped three more women get huge state pension payouts from the Government. Carole Davies, on ‘pennies a week’ when she retired, was entitled to £56,000.

We have heard from about a 100 fed-up British Gas customers paying hundreds of pounds a year for boiler and heating insurance who still can’t get an appointment for repairs in good time.

A broken boiler is stressful enough at the best of times – never mind during a pandemic. You can’t pop to a friend or relative’s house for a shower or to do your washing.

Last week insurance giant Aviva warned that the shift to flexible working during the pandemic could hinder women’s careers. Yet pension experts say the exact opposite could be true.

If someone lives until the age of 90, they could receive over £7,000 more in retirement income by deferring the state pension for a year, number-crunchers at AJ Bell said.

Employers dumping generous, guaranteed final salary pensions and Government hikes to the state pension age are among trends that will make people saving now poorer in retirement.

Stockbroking experts from Killik & Co explain what to consider when investing at that age, and the contingency plans your father should put in place if he becomes unable to handle his own affairs.

Experts have long feared Britain isn’t saving enough for retirement against a backdrop of increasing life expectancy, rising state pension age and the demise of generous final salary pensions.

Those born in the 1950s lost out on up to £50,000 after the age they could claim a pension – currently £175.20 a week – was raised from 60 to 66 with the 2011 Pensions Act.

Victims of mis-sold pensions are being advised they might be better off making a claim themselves rather than going through a third party.

My husband died last November and had a company pension from Aga Rangemaster. However, the firm that runs it – Mercer – has made it hard for me to receive my widow’s pension.

Details about whether payments will be made in order of age, amount owed, or to claimants who are still alive first, are being called for by MPs on the work and pensions committee.

The coronavirus pandemic and national lockdown has placed huge strain on millions of people’s incomes, but around one in seven now have more cash to spare, says Tom Selby of AJ Bell.

With the Covid-19 outbreak hitting many workers hard, Legal and General suggests there are 429,000 unemployed over 50s in Britain, comprising one in four of all unemployed people.

Dignity Funerals, which owns more than 800 parlours nationwide, refused to deal with the next-of-kin of 65-year-old Peter Grant after he died from lung cancer in October last year.

All my mother’s accounts were closed and the money transferred, but the bank will not give details. I don’t get it! How come she could just help herself to everything and what can I do about it?

The Government last week revealed it had put aside £3bn to identify and pay around 200,000 wives, widows and over-80s who should have paid a bigger pension.

The number of Britons paying the higher rate of income tax will soar from four million to five million by 2026. The higher 40 per cent rate will be frozen at £50,270 from April 2021 until 2025/26.

The Government has just accepted 200,000 married women, widows and the over 80s are on the wrong rate of pension and says it expects to spend around £3billion putting it right.

Pension scammers are more likely to target Baby Boomers than any other generation, a report by Just Group has revealed.

Will Rishi’s third Budget in a year be what Britain’s economy needs to achieve escape velocity as lockdown eases (and hopefully never comes back)?

He uses the pension as the bond between us, because he knows my financial situation. I truly cannot stay because of this. Lawyer Steven Gasser, pictured left, replies.

My late father-in-law invested to reduce inheritance tax, but died before most had reached the qualifying two years – and then the market crashed.

This highlights a colossal short-changing of state pensioners and I would urge readers to check their pensions or encourage relatives or friends to look at theirs.

The huge bill for shortchanging women on their pensions for decades was revealed by Office for Budget Responsibility alongside the Budget announcements today.

The lifetime allowance, the total amount you can pay into a pension and still get tax relief, will remain at £1,073,100 until 2026.

There will be bans on cold calling, expensive add-ons and kickbacks to middlemen, to prevent people being mis-sold unsuitable funeral plans.

Baroness Altmann and Steve Webb believe women and those in middle-age in particular should be using every opportunity to put money into a pension.

There are two beneficiaries, my sister and her daughter who is also the executor. Do you think it is possible for me to make a claim for a share of the will? If so what do I do?

There are a number of important factors to take into account when choosing how best to boost retirement savings with taxpayer handouts, says financial expert Kay Ingram.

Unlike her colleagues in the photograph, Debbie McGinty (far left) has had to keep working because she was excluded from the NHS pension scheme when she went into practice nursing.

Parents need to think ahead and make arrangements for what should happen to the property in their wills – and ideally let everyone know in advance – or risk a messy legal battle.

The booklet, written by Personal Finance editor Jeff Prestridge, provides plenty of sound advice on how to build a financial fortress for retirement.

The number of Britons making financial plans for after they die saw a huge increase in 2020, according to new figures. We explain how to write yours – and what happens if you don’t.

More and more pensioners are happy to keep on working – especially now the home-working revolution means it’s never been easier to keep on earning and even start a new career.

Four in ten people trying to wrap up their deceased loved ones’ finances say it has taken more than three months to close all their accounts a report from consumer group Which? revealed.

According to a major survey conducted by pollster YouGov for the law firm Irwin Mitchell, a third of women in their 40s have yet to put any plans in place for retirement.

The rise in the ‘normal minimum pension age’ is designed to reflect rising life expectancy and to stay in line with the state pension age, which is also scheduled to increase to 67 in 2028.

Do executors have the responsibility to sell the house to clear the debt, thus making the right to reside clause and trust irrelevant? Lawyer Helen Taylor replies.

For years we have fought for a more compassionate service for the bereaved. This is extremely close to my heart, after struggling to sort out my mum’s financial affairs when she died in 2015.

David Rhodes (pictured) transferred his £157,000 pension to a scam scheme in 2012, but the entire pot was rescued. Dalriada Trustees held on to it for seven years before handing just £67,000 back.

The lifetime mortgage market is ‘awash with rate cuts’ and the number of available products is at an all-time high. So is now the time for over-55s to consider taking cash out of their home?

Favoured destinations, picked from a shortlist of picturesque towns across the UK, included Christchurch in Dorset and St Andrews in Fife, Scotland.

In recent weeks, readers with old L&G policies have complained of having contributions stopped. Others have been unable to get through to ReAssure to complain.

A new pension platform targeting the self-employed has launched, allowing users to start saving in less than ten minutes and with flexibility. We chat to CEO Marco Ross (pictured).

When John and Veronica Lerston attempted to sell the two flats they had bought with retirement savings the building was found to be a fire risk and effectively worthless.

Hundreds of thousands of savers who don’t take advice will see providers put their pension pots into ‘one-size-fits-all’ investment funds.

According to the Equity Release Council, 21% fewer borrowers made drawdowns from existing equity release pots last year, deciding instead to leave the money in the hands of their lender.

At a work and pensions committee hearing, Pensions Minister Guy Opperman (pictured) told MPs how errors were originally made and what is being done to fix them now.

Ellie Lacey, 19, (pictured with father Peter) and her brother and two cousins aged in their early 20s each inherited a share of a pension set up by their late grandfather.

Many of those who were sent further demands having already paid assumed their cheques had been lost in the post. But it was really because of processing delays at TV Licensing due to Covid.

The state-backed savings giant has been accused of abandoning older customers in its drive to axe prize warrants to save money and paper by only consulting customers with an email about the change.

Young people now care much more about pensions, with interest typically sparked after they save a £5k pot, new research reveals.

Pensions are often a divorcing couple’s second biggest asset after the family home, and are sometimes worth even more, yet are frequently overlooked in financial settlements.

Pension freedoms mean retirees can now invest their savings how they like rather than buy a stingy annuity. But what do you need to consider and plan ahead for when funding retirement this way?

At the extremes, prices range from £1,488 a week in Islington in London to £621 in Blaenau Gwent in Wales, according to figures from insurer Legal & General.

A survey of homeowners aged 55 and over, by retirement home builder Audley Group, found 34 per cent want to move to a better area and 29 per cent want to be closer to family and friends.

One person who knows this is Ian Dibb. Eighteen years ago, his sister took her own life. Two years later, his mum died of lung cancer. Dealing with all the subsequent administration was a nightmare.

The hope is that ready-made deals will help people use pension freedoms, which give them greater control over their retirement savings, more successfully.

The People’s Pension’s report, unveiled for the first time in Money Mail today, lays bare the ‘binary’ choice pensioners currently have between costly financial advice – or going it alone.

A ‘direct cremation’ takes place without a funeral service, and ashes are returned to a family afterwards, allowing them to organise a personal memorial for a loved one at a time of their choosing.

For years, widower Thomas Wyness from Aberdeenshire was bombarded with letters telling him he’d won big cash prizes. But the prizes never arrived, and his losses quickly added up.

Some 42 per cent of eligible homeowners are failing to claim any benefit at all, losing out on £830 a year on average, according to a report by Just Group,

The move might be particularly beneficial for over-55s, who can gain immediate access to their pension pots if they want.

Why is there no protection in law when there has been probate fraud? I spent £2,000 on solicitors fees advising my estranged brother of the will. He chose to ignore all correspondence.

Rishi Sunak is already signalling that as soon as a Covid recovery dawns, he will be looking to meet the gargantuan cost of the pandemic – and that could hit pensions.

Wendy Bowles, 81, (pictured with husband Derek, 84) may have missed out on as much as £17,000 in the pension scandal exposed by us and Steve Webb.

The deal commits both sides to maintaining free trade across the Channel. And while its full impact won’t be known for years, almost all forecasts agree it is good news for the economy.

Widows who fear they are underpaid state pension now or were in the past can check their payments on a new web page launched by our agony uncle Steve Webb.

There are an estimated 510,000 retirees around the world whose state pensions are currently frozen at whatever amount it was set at when they moved abroad.

Margaret Lyons, pictured with her late husband Michael, has only now inherited a substantial pension he built up over a 45-year career at Otis Elevator Company, which he joined at age 15.

This is Money asked AJ Bell’s Tom Selby for his top tips on saving into a pension when you’re self-employed and how to use it to save money on tax at the same time.

The basic price includes an oak veneer coffin, transport to collect the deceased person, a 20-minute service at a crematorium, music and readings, and the return of ashes to a family.

Official police fraud report figures had previously shown that just £31 million had been lost to pension scammers since 2017. Experts have always believed the true cost to be much higher.

Do you know of a definitive way to search online banks in one go? Something similar to the ‘My Lost Account’ search but for an active account.

If trust turns out to be misplaced and matters go awry, and in the worst cases lead to abuse, steps can be taken against holders of powers of attorney, lawyers explain.

Millions of ‘Generation X’ workers born in the early 1960s to the late 1970s face years of financial hardship in later life, a new study has warned.

It is important to consider your long-term finances and avoid damaging your pension if you lose your job. Kay Ingram, director of public policy at LEBC, offers some tips.

Pension platform PensionBee has unveiled plans to launch a new Fossil Fuel Free service for its existing customers’ pension pots. We speak to chief executive Romi Savova to find out more.

My daughter is getting divorced from her husband. They have been married for 18 years and lived together before that for seven years. He wants to keep their pensions out of the divorce.

There should be few cases when people of working age are not earning state pension credits, says our expert Steve Webb.

Tens of thousands of elderly women could be owed an estimated £100m in state pension after a major blunder, which was uncovered by Steve Webb and This is Money.

Our research shows that customers of both Barclays and Tesco Bank can get £500 sent to their homes via Royal Mail special delivery – at no cost. NatWest also offers a cash-to-home service.

Businesses could have to redo their sums for savers who transferred out of their pension schemes as well as those who stayed, following the latest ruling in a complex court saga.

Grandparents have four grandchildren on average, so they could spend about £416 or an estimated £2.4bn in total, according to the research from insurer SunLife.

Penny Loseby, 71, pictured below with husband Paul, missed out on £16,000 over seven years. When she tried to dispute her low payments, she was ignored or fobbed off on repeated occasions.

Comparing September with April this year – when a strict lockdown was in place across the UK – the Association of British Insurers found a sharp increase in people dipping into their pension pots.

Don Forsyth, 61, wants to unlock the money tied up in an old pension. But because it comes with valuable guarantees and is worth more than £30,000 it needs a financial adviser to sign off.

The Fossil Fuel Free plan will exclude companies with oil, gas or coal reserves, as well as tobacco companies and manufacturers of controversial weapons.

Do you know what all your pension pots are worth? Are you confident you’ve not lost track of one? If the answer to both questions is ‘yes’, congratulations – you’re doing better than most.

It has been a tough year for grandparents, with lockdowns and social distancing keeping millions away from loved ones. But they can still help out, and help themselves at the same time.

There are several ways to increase state pension entitlement – some for those who have already passed state retirement age and others for those below age 66. Many of them cost nothing.

‘Clone’ alerts by regulators have jumped 34 per cent to 401 so far this year, and 261 per cent since 2015 – and they currently make up two fifths of all fraud warnings issued by the City regulator.

I asked for a copy of the ‘deferred payment arrangement’ but it’s unsigned. The council has not formally asked for payment. Lawyer James Urquhart-Burton replies.

Some 59 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men are now putting 12 per cent of their income into a pension, a level considered ‘adequate’ for a relatively comfortable old age.

The Mail on Sunday has produced an essential guide for people aged 55 or over who are looking to unlock cash from their homes to boost their finances.

At least 15,000 sick and elderly Britons have been wrongly denied around £300m in support, research shows. It means thousands could be needlessly selling their homes to pay for care.

My husband says I need to reduce the offsetting figure during our divorce as he wishes to draw down all his pension at 55, although he will continue to work and he was 53 when we split due to his adultery.

The decline in pension saving will raise fears that millions of workers could be forced to delay retirement as they struggle to put away adequate savings for later life.

Contribution levels are static among people in their 20s, and have dropped slightly among the over-55s, a new study of pension saving habits among Interactive Investor users reveals.

Some 1,900 women so far are confirmed to have lost out on state pension in a scandal we uncovered. Blunders were detected in one in four of the 7,200 claims dealt with to date by the DWP.

A growing number of over-60s like Charita Jones (pictured) are embracing the earning potential of the internet by making videos about their hobbies – and attracting millions of followers.

The pandemic has caused much financial hardship, pushing many to dip into their pension funds. Latest figures show a rise in the number of people doing just that over the past three months.

I worked for Tetley (of tea bags fame) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When I left I withdrew my pension fund, amounting to some £300 or so. A few weeks ago I got a letter, supposedly from L&G.

Direct Line says it received 288 claims over lockdown, each worth an average of £1,628. And Aviva reported a 400 per cent increase in claims for lost and damaged hearing aids between April and July.

One in three over-55s would retire early if made redundant during the Covid-19 crisis, amid signs the pandemic is making people reassess their health and working life.

Over-75s are being reassured they can buy a TV licence without leaving home during the pandemic, after it emerged some felt they needed to post forms or get documents photocopied.

After my husband died, I received part of his pension. Before this, my pensions were very small, so I had not paid tax since I retired. I have now received a number of demands from the taxman.

Many women spend much of their lives working part-time to juggle caring responsibilities for children and other family members, and so make smaller pension contributions.

The current means-tested system is unfair, confusing, demeaning and ‘frightening for the most vulnerable people in our society, and their families’, according to the health and social care committee.

Insurance provider Pension Insurance Corporation has agreed to buy out the Old British Steel Pension Scheme and take responsibility for more than 30,000 workers’s retirement funds.

Bill McGregor, 71, from Dundee, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in January last year. He had surgery to remove his prostate, but the cancer has now spread to lymph nodes in his pelvis.

The triple lock means annual state pension rises are decided by whatever is the highest of price inflation, average earnings growth or 2.5 per cent.

‘Last year more than half of those still at work thought their lifestyle would improve when they retired. This year that number has halved,’ says Interactive Investor, of its survey of 12,000 adults.

A quarter of savers have stopped or cut back on paying into their pensions during the Covid-19 crisis and more are considering doing so, new research reveals.

A tax flaw means an estimated 1.5million poorly paid staff lose Government payments into their pensions, depending on the type of scheme operated by their employer.