Supernova
Good luck ! Morbid it may be but I think the MOST important question you have to ask yourself is how long are you going to live ??
Consider family history, current heatlth etc. even look at life expectancy tables...

The next consideration (in my view) is INFLATION.... your figure of £ 25k might be OK for a few years but if you remember the late 1970s when inflation hit 20% p.a. + .

IF (and it may not be possible) you can get all pensions up to £ 20k p.a. (including state pensions) you can then opt for 'flexible drawdown' which looks much more attractive to me..

Don't, don't, DON'T put your cash lump sums into your SIPP !!!

Once they're in, you've lost all control over how and when you can draw them out. Put as much as you can into an ISA and the rest into some sort of savings plan - National Savings, Premium Bonds, deposit account, stocks & shares if you know what you're doing or want to learn; whatever. Move cash into your ISA each ensuing year. That way you maximise your freedom to spend your lump sums how and when you like and minimise your future tax bills.

Depending on how frugal you're willing to be, you may still have enough in your SIPP to retire completely right now.

Ok, given that you already have a substantial cash cushion there may be some merit in taking the Government's shilling (or 40%) in your specific case.

You're pretty clued up, I guess you've done the sums. But the benefit is still much more marginal than it sounds. The price of that tax rebate is that at least 75% of the enhanced sum is subject to Govt control for the rest of your natural. You can only draw on the remaining balance at about 6 - 8% p.a, you're most unlikely to be able to draw it all and when you die the taxman will take 55% of the residue.

Going for flexible drawdown means that you can draw it all, but you'll have to give about £200K to an insurance co to buy an annuity of about £10Kp.a. which with your final salary pen and state pen would take you to the required £20K p.a. threshold. And you'll always pay at least 20% tax on your withdrawals.

Thanks James, very helpful.

So, I decide on whether to take out 60K or even 200K into Drawdown and the review decides that I can take 120% of the GAD of that amount on a rising scale over 3 years, say 5.5%, 5.9% and 6%?

Good point about the risk balance between the SIPP and the ISAs/cash.

When you say risky do you mean at least say 60% in equities?

I'm not sure my spending will drop off too much from 55-65, but I might have to be prepared for that if necessary.

Cheers

I agree with some earlier comments - i.e. do not put spare cash into your Sipp - unless you are getting tax relief. 40% tax relief makes it worthwhile, 20% is debateable versus putting the money into an Isa and retaining complete control over your withdrawal options.

Other personal preferences: ......

Find a good Sipp broker that has a good track record. In my view avoid brokers that impose annual charges for holding equities or have annual management fees for doing nothing (for me that excludes HL or Alliance Trust).
I use Sippdeal which avoids these charges, has a good platform with lower dealing charges as an extra bonus.

Avoid funds i.e. avoid Unit Trusts or Oeics (Fundsmith oeic is my only exception to this rule).
Instead Investment Trusts and ETF's have a more transparent charging structure and in performace terms they generally outperform funds.

It can also be fun and very rewarding to select your own individual equities but remember you will need to do plenty of learning and research to do this successfully. You are also likely to make some bad decisions during the first 5 years of your learning curve so grow this side of your portfolio gradually. For individual equities stick to UK listed companies but for managed investment trusts you can diversify your holdings across UK, Asia, Americas, Global and Themed investments.
Example Investment Trusts from my own portfolio:
Aberdeen New Thai IT, Scottish Mortgage IT, Findsbury Inc & Growth IT, Templeton Emerging mkts IT, First State Oriental Smaller Cos IT, Standard Life Smaller (UK) Cos IT, Biotech IT, ETFX Agriculture fund(£).