Not long now. By the middle of next week, most people hitting 55 will find themselves in a whole new world of choice. They'll be able to pick and choose how and when to access their pensions.
They'll be able to keep as much or as little as they like inside their pension wrappers; to invest in their own way; and, crucially, leave anything left on their death to their heirs entirely free of inheritance tax (IHT).
We look at the details of just how this all works here. But, as regular readers will know, it is mostly excellent news for the kind of people who read MoneyWeek intelligent savers and investors.
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I say mostly for the simple reason that there is no end of danger in these reforms. Why? First, because it comes at a difficult time for the markets. Anyone looking to make the most out of pensions freedom will want to use some kind of income drawdown system to maintain their lifestyle. But income isn't easy to come by these days.
UK interest rates remain at rock-bottom lows. In several countries in Europe rates are actually negative. And the increasingly desperate search for yield means that almost any asset offering one (be it a buy-to-let property, a corporate bond, or a dividend-paying equity) is rather more expensive than it should be.
That leads me on to the second great danger ahead: criminals and the financial industry. Nothing excites the criminal fraternity more than the knowledge that thousands of people are about to have access to large piles of cash they aren't entirely sure how to squeeze an income out of. So we must all be ready to see off no end of cold-calling scammers offering a variety of weird and wonderful ways to make an easy 6% in a 0.5% world.
However, it's also true that nothing excites the super-profit-seeking instincts of the financial industry more than those same piles of cash in those same inexperienced hands. So even once the over-55s have (hopefully) seen off the various illegal schemes working to take all their cash at once, they will have to keep their guard up: some of the best brains in Britain are currently hard at work thinking of high-promise, high-fee products to flog to the newly cash-rich.
It's all beginning to sound less fun, isn't it? It gets worse. There's a group in the UK that we need to be even more financially frightened of than we are of the mainstream financial industry.The government.
None of our main parties have any intention of trusting us with a frank statement of just how broke we are. But broke we are. That means that either state spending has to fall (no chance), or the tax take has to rise. The still generous tax breaks on pensions (from the old income-tax reliefs to the new IHT reliefs) don't fit well with that scenario. Best not to get too used to them.
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The myth of hypothecated taxesEditor's letter The government wants to add a penny on our National Insurance contributions to pay for social care. But it won’t, says Merryn Somerset Webb. It will just vanish into the black hole of our public finances.
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Should capital gains tax be higher or lower?Editor's letter Capital gains tax is up for review. There are plenty of long-term arguments to be had about this. But in the short term, Merryn Somerset Webb has a few ideas for the government should it want a little cash inflow.
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The best thing you can do for your children is to secure your own financesEditor's letter The "Bank of Mum and Dad" is now the 11th-largest mortgage lender in the UK. But giving your children money may not be the best way to help them, says Merryn Somerset Webb.
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Inheritance tax: just abolish the entire thingEditor's letter Why not abolish inheritance tax and replace it with a gift tax on the recipients of unearned cash – wherever it comes from?
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Save into your pension while you canEditor's letter Fiddling with pension tax relief could be a nice little earner for a government hungry for cash, says Merryn Somerset Webb. Save what you can while you can.
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Good news for defined-benefits pensionsEditor's letter A rate rise or two could make the defined-benefits pensions deficit simply disappear, says Merryn Somerset Webb. In the meantime, there are a couple of things pension fund managers could do to help things along.
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Don't get too relaxed about your pensionEditor's letter George Osborne might leave pensions alone for now, says Merryn Somerset Webb. But don't count on it staying that way.
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Pensions: the counter-revolution
Editor's letter An awful lot of people are beginning to wish Geogre Osborne had never started down the path of pensions reform, says Merryn Somerset Webb.
