Commencing a Pension from an SMSF
No. Disclaimer - As a US educated fellow, I needed to search a bit. I found an article 7 Common SMSF Pension Errors. It implied that there are minimum payments required each year as with our US retirement accounts. These minimums are unrelated to the assets within the account, just based on the total value. The way I read that, there would be a point where you'd have to sell a property or partial interest to be sure you have the cash to distribute each year. I also learned that unlike US rules, which permit a distribution of stock as part of a required minimum distribution, in Australia, the distribution must be in cash (or a deposited check, of course.)
"The specific ""State Pension"" plan you have linked to is provided by the government of the U.K. to workers resident there. More generally speaking, many countries provide some kind of basic worker's pension (or ""social security"") to residents.  In the United States, it is called (surprise!) ""Social Security"", and in Canada most of us call ours ""Canada Pension Plan"".  Such pensions are typically funded by payroll deductions distinct & separate from income tax deducted at source.  You can learn about the variety of social security programs around the world courtesy of the U.S. Social Security Administration's own survey. What those and many other government or state pensions have in common, and the term or concept that I think you are looking for, is that they are typically defined benefit type of plans.  A defined benefit or DB plan is where there is a promised (or ""defined"") benefit, i.e. a set lump sum amount (such as with a ""cash balance"" type of DB plan) or income per year in retirement (more typical). (Note: Defined benefit plans are not restricted to be offered by governments only. Many companies also offer DB plans to their employees, but DB plans in the private sector are becoming more rare due to the funding risk inherent in making such a long-term promise to employees.) Whereas a defined contribution or DC plan is one where employee and/or employer put money into a retirement account, the balance of which is invested in a selection of funds. Then, at retirement the resulting lump sum amount or annual income amounts (if the resulting balance is annuitized) are based on the performance of the investments selected. That is, with a DC plan, there is no promise of you getting either a set lump sum amount or a set amount of annual income at retirement!  The promise was up front, on how much money they would contribute.  So, the contributions are defined (often according to a matching contribution scheme), yet the resulting benefit itself is not defined (i.e. promised.) Summary: DB plans promise you the money (the benefit) you'll get at retirement. DC plans only promise you the money (the contributions) you get now." "I'm assuming that all the savings are of 'defined contribution' type, and not 'defined benefit' as per marktristan's comment to the original question. Aside from convenience of having all the pension money in one place, which may or may not be something you care about, there may be a benefit associated with being able to rebalance your portfolio when you need do. Say you invest your pension pot in a 60%/40% of equities and bonds respectively. Due higher risk/reward ratio of the equities part, in the long run equities tend to get 'overweight' turning your mix into 70%/30% or even 80%/20%, therefore raising your overall exposure to equities. General practice is to rebalance your portfolio every now and then, in this case, by selling some equities and buying more bonds (""sell high, buy low""). Now if you have few small pockets of pension money, it makes it harder to keep track of the overall asset allocation and actually do the rebalancing as you cannot see and trade everything from one place." According to this site: You can apply for German benefits at any U.S. Social Security office by completing application form SSA-2490.  So have a look at this form and collect everything you need. But this site also says that you need to have at least 5 years of pay.   Worker-Male or female-Benefits payable at: age 65 with 5 years of coverage... I have found the info of 5 years minimum also elsewhere. So I guess you do not get any money from the Rentenversicherung (i.e. from the normal job) and I doubt that they will change that in the future. You may receive some money from your time as a Beamter and after 5 years as a Beamter it would be quite some money. But on some other site it has the 5 year figure also for the Pension: Die Pension wird für Beamte und Richter nur dann gezahlt, wenn diese mindestens fünf Jahre im Dienst aktiv tätig waren.  They have also numbers to call on the first site, so you may ask them. "You have a large number of possible choices to make, and a lot of it does depend upon what interests you when you are older. The first thing to note is the difference between ISAs and pension-contribution schemes tax wise, which is of course the taxation point. When you contribute to your pensions scheme, it is done before taxation, which is why when you draw from your pension scheme you have to pay income tax. Conversely, your ISA is something you contribute to after you have already paid income tax - so besides the 10% tax on dividends if you hold any assets which may them, it is tax free when you draw on it regardless of how much you have accrued over the years.  Now, when it comes to the question ""what is the best way to save"", the answer is almost certainly going to be filling your pension to the point where you're going to retire just on the edge of the limit, and then putting the rest into ISAs. This way you will not be paying the higher rates of tax associated with breaking the lifetime limit, but also get maximum contributions into your various schemes. There is an exception to this of course, which is the return on investment. If you do not have access to a SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension), you may be able to receive a far higher return on investment when using a Stocks & Shares ISA, in which case the fact that you have to pay taxes prior to funding it may not make a significant difference. The other issue you have, as others have mentioned is rent.  While now you may be enjoying London, it is in my opinion quite likely that will change when you get older, London has a very high-cost of living, even compared to the home counties, and many of its benefits are not relevant to someone who is retired. When you retire, it is quite possible that you will see it fit to take a large sum out of your various savings, and purchase a house, which means that regardless of how much you are drawing out you will be able to have somewhere to live. Renting is fine when you are working, but when you have a certain amount of (admittedly growing) funds that have to last you indefinitely, who knows if it will last you." I have had pension programs with two companies.  The first told you what your benefit would be if you retired at age X with Y years of service. Each year of service got you a percentage of your final years salary. There was a different formula for early retirement, and there was an offset for social security. They were responsible for putting enough money away each year to meet their obligations. Just before I left they did add a new feature. You could get the funds in the account in a lump sum when you left. If you left early you got the money in the account. If you left at retirement age you got the money that was needed to produce the benefit you were promised. Which was based on current interest rates. The second company had a plan where they published the funding formula. You knew with every quarterly statement how much was in your account, and what interest it had earned, and what benefit they estimated you would receive if you stayed until retirement age. This fund felt almost like a defined contribution, because the formula was published. If most people took the lump sum that was the only part that mattered. Both pension plans had a different set of formulas based on marriage status and survivor rules. The interest rates are important because they are used to determine how much money is needed to produce the promised monthly benefit. They are also used to determine how much they need to allocate each year to cover their obligations.  If you can't make the math work you need to keep contacting HR. You need to understand how much should be flowing into the account each month. "Setting a certain % of income for pension actually depends on person.  ""Always pay yourself first"" This is the quote which I love the most and which I am currently following.  If you are planning to do 8%, then why don't you stretch a little bit more to 10%. I suggest you to do monthly review. If you can stretch more, increase % a little more by challenging yourself. This is rewarding. For pension plan, there is SRS Supplementary Retirement Plan where foreigners can also set aside of their money. This is long term plan and you can enjoy tax relief too. The catch is you can only withdraw the money when you reach certain age. Otherwise, you have to pay tax again (certain %) once you decide to withdraw. Serveral banks in Singapore offers to open this account. I suggest to compare pro and cons. If you are planning to work in Singapore for quite long, you may wish to consider this. Useful links http://www.mof.gov.sg/MOF-For/Individuals/Supplementary-Retirement-Scheme-SRS https://blog.moneysmart.sg/budgeting/is-the-supplementary-retirement-scheme-a-waste-of-your-time-and-money/" "I have an MScF (Undergrad Math/Econ) and I currently work in algo trading, I started off on the buy side and then went off on my own after I got a large enough bonus for seed capital,.... :)  Quantitative Finance is not a ""small field"" within it there are subfields (there are much more subfields that these).  Econometrics/Statistical/Research methods, time series analysis, statistics, stochastic calculus, data mining  Asset Management/Trading: Building testing and implementing models, usually you have an idea, test it and implement it, requires a lot of good time series skills, statistical skills and programming and be good at research.  Modelling/Pricing/Risk, building better pricing models, coming up with elegant solutions, so a strong knowledge of stochastic calc, Differential Equations, Partial Differential Equations, Monte Carlo Simulations, etc  12 Months will not make you an expert in any of the above. You may learn enough to understand it. Quant Finance is something you learn by doing, yes you need to understand the theory but its just theory until you start to implement it.   Finally if you do an MFin/MscF/MFE make sure there is a THESIS otherwise it will be tough to do a PhD after.  If you want a taste, grab some R/Matlab/Whatever and try and program some common SSRN papers.." I had this problem when I finished my job in Canada in Sept 2013.   You'll likely have to open the account in person in Canada, at least if you don't already have a relationship with a broker there. DO NOT go to Virtual Brokers.  They told me that my US citizenship was no problem, but right before I left Canada to double check.  It wasn't until I asked specifically which US states they were licensed in that they realized they were licensed in NO US STATES. They told me that they'd freeze my account when I left. I then moved my (former) pension to a locked-in RRSP at BMO.  As of September 2010 BMO could handle residents of most US states, but it took some tooth pulling to get the list out of them.  However, after I flew to the USA, BMO called to demand more ID.  My account was frozen until I flew back to Canada in person just to show ID. Annoyed, I closed the BMO account and moved it to TD Waterhouse.  TD waterhouse can handle accounts for residents of all the US states EXCEPT Virginia, Louisiana, and Nebraska.  (I only got the complete list of exceptions when I made my first trade, since the guys at the trading desk are much more knowledgeable about such things than the guys in the branch.)  TD was extremely friendly about my USA citizenship/residence.  (Many Canadian brokers simply won't accept US residents, at least as of the end of 2013.) Whichever broker you choose, BRING LOTS MORE ID than they require.  Insist that they zerox it all. Make sure to include your social security card.  You don't want them to demand more ID after you've left the country, like BMO did.  They may even make such a move simply to get rid of US customers, because the FATCA is a pain for foreign banks.