My husband and I are finally making the move to the Spanish coast next year and the pension side is the bit keeping me up at night. Do you leave it where it is and draw from abroad, or move it? What did you wish someone had told you before you started?
Got independent financial advice specific to cross-border pensions before deciding anything. Worth the fee purely for the clarity, regardless of which option we ended up choosing.
Following, this exact decision is looming for us too.
Good thread. The one thing I'd add: pension and tax rules for retirees are exactly the kind of thing that varies by country and changes year to year, so I wouldn't lean on any single figure you read online (including here). The Taxes and Residency sections of your destination guide are the right starting point, and for the actual pension move a paid hour with a cross-border specialist pays for itself.
Left mine where it was and draw from abroad — simpler for my situation, though I wouldn’t assume that’s the right call universally.
This is exactly the kind of decision where I'd gently steer everyone away from acting on forum answers alone (including the good ones here). Pension transfers, how they're taxed across two countries, and currency exposure are complex, personal, and easy to get expensively wrong. Please speak to a qualified cross-border financial adviser and check the tax rules for your specific situation before moving anything — the guide can point you to the right questions, but this needs proper professional advice.
Good reminder to check the actual guide section rather than assume, thank you.
For anyone finding this thread later, I'll add our experience, with the obvious caveat that I'm a retired civil servant, not a financial adviser.
We left our pensions where they were and draw them from abroad, mainly because our advisor showed us that moving them wouldn't benefit us and would lose some protections. But the part that surprised me was the tax side. How our pensions are taxed depends on the agreement between the UK and Portugal, and on the kind of pension, and it wasn't what the internet had told me. One of our pensions is taxed in one country and one in the other, which I'd never have guessed.
So I'd agree with Jimmy and Paolo: pay for an hour with someone who knows both countries before you move anything. We did, and it turned a list of forty worried questions into three decisions.
Forty worried questions into three decisions is exactly what I need right now.
We did the same and left ours in Denmark, and it's been simple so far.
Two pensions taxed in two different countries surprised us as well.