Buying years or take the money...

Hi,
Working in the public service, I will retire with 30 years service if I get to 65.
I've a large private pension which I have done nothing about for years.
It now has 97k in it and I need to decide what do with it.
As I'm now 50 I can take 25% out and put the rest into a bond which is currently very tempting, especially given about 8 years of lower take home pay.
Or I can transfer it into my public service pot and get an extra 7 years service.
Basically need to get advice on this from somewhere but not sure where to turn.
Any help appreciated.

It appears that for the next few years all pension funds are not going to grow much .
K97 is not a large private pension in that @ 65 you need circa k25 in fund to get k1 of an annual pension.
eg to get a k20 pension if you were retiring today @65 takes a pension pot of circa k500!


Lets say you were 65 today and your k97 has grown to = k150 .
That K150 will buy you a pension of k6 per annum .

If the 7 extra years in public service buys you more than K6 per annum , then that makes sense.
Also you might have contributory old age pension to check out.
(I ain,t a pension expert) so if I am way off other posters will help.

Thanks for the info, food for thought.
The temptation is to take out the 25% cash I can get at age 50 and invest the rest.
I don't think I can take this out and put the rest into the public pot, which would be my ideal solution.
Unless someone can tell me otherwise.......

hi, my advice is take the 25% now, don,t buy service you will have 30 years out of 40 done at 65 ie 75% of a work pension between taxes etc the 25% difference will probably only mean you will be short 15% net of full pension, you should enquire ifyou can put the remaining 75% into an AVC which you can then use when you retire to buy the 10years lump sum you will be short on retirement gratuity.

Thanks for the post stoves1.
Just want to know there is no problem with getting the 25% tax free, then get advice on what to do with the rest?
Don't mind paying for independent advice but not sure where to go for this as I'm only looking into this now.