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In the latest of our series of ‘top ten tips’ we look at your choices and options at retirement.

Use these top tips to start planning your own choices and options at retirement, to make sure you get the best results from your pension funds.

1 – Make sure that you start to look into your choices and options at least three months before you want them to be paid to you. This is to ensure that you have sufficient time to consider your choices and options and if need be to top-up your pension fund.

2 – Your pension plan provider should let you have a valuation of your plan some months ahead of the maturity date of the plan (but remember of course that this value can change between the date it is provided and your retirement date). They should also tell you what benefits they are able to provide and tell you also that you have the right to take the value of your plan to another provider if you wish to do so.

3 – If your pension plan has a guarantee in the form of Guaranteed Annuity Rates this is very important as it may mean that you will get a bigger pension payment from your current provider than you might get from the open market for annuities.

4 – If you are invested in ‘volatile’ investment funds (for example investment funds that are linked to the value of shares) you may want to switch to a cash fund in the run up to retirement. This will protect your pension fund from any fall in value in the short term but you will of course miss out on any increases in value attributable to the rising value of shares. In fact we would suggest that this needs to be reviewed in each of the five years before the maturity date of your plan.

5 – Consider if you need to take the tax free cash lump sum (confusingly now called a ‘pension commencement lump sum’) available from your plan. Many people do take the much loved cash sum but if you already have enough capital available for your retirement you may decide not to.

6 – Because you do not have to take pension income from your plan but you can still take tax free cash some people do this either because they have a capital project in mind (paying off a mortgage, buying new property, investing in a new business or paying school fees – these are some of the reasons for doing this that we have seen) or to take the tax free cash in stages to spend as income (and avoid having to pay any income tax!)

7 – Most people buy an annuity with their pension fund. You can choose the most suitable annuity depending upon your circumstances. If you have a pre-existing medical condition you may be entitled to an ‘enhanced’ annuity that will provide you with more pension income than a standard annuity. Also if you are a smoker you will typically be able to get higher annuity rates than a non-smoker. You should check to see if you are entitled to such an annuity.

8 – You do not have to buy an annuity to receive your pension income. You can instead keep the pension fund invested and take income from the fund, something known as income drawdown (or more properly unsecured pension). This is not without risk but might be considered if you expect to need flexible income in retirement or want to make sure that in the event of your early death your beneficiaries get the lion’s share of your pension fund.

9 – There are also arrangements that combine both annuity purchase and unsecured pension together to try to give you the best of both worlds. These are sometimes referred to as ‘third way’ annuities. You can also think about phasing in your benefits over a number of years.

10 – You can do all of this your self if you choose but alternatively you might employ the services of an adviser. If you do choose one who is wholly independent and has suitable qualifications and experience.

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Martin Bamford is site editor of BrilliantWithMoney and a Chartered Financial Planner at Informed Choice. You can follow Martin on Twitter @martinbamford and get BrilliantWithMoney updates @brilliantmoney.