The years between when work stops and when State Pension starts are the most planning-rich window in retirement. Five to twelve years where the household lives on its own resources, the tax position is at its most flexible, and the decisions taken make a measurable difference to the next three decades.
Almost everyone who plans to stop work between 55 and State Pension has the right total — but the wrong drawing order. Three principles shape how a properly structured bridge actually works.
You can stop work in your fifties. State Pension doesn't arrive until 66 or 67. That's a 5–12 year gap where every pound of income comes from your own structures. The bridge is the plan that funds it.
For most households, the bridge years are the moment when tax planning has the most leverage. No salary filling the personal allowance. No DB pension yet. A chance to draw pension income at the 0% or 20% band that will never come back.
Pension drawn too early, ISAs drawn too late, GIA never touched. Get the sequencing wrong and you can pay 40% tax in early retirement and end up with an IHT problem you didn't need. Same wealth, worse outcome.
A simplified view of the income shape across the bridge years. The horizontal axis runs from stop-work age to State Pension age. Each colour shows where income comes from in that year.
Cash buffer in place. Pension drawdown sequenced to use the personal allowance. ISA + tax-free cash topping up.
The contrarian move — draw more pension than you currently spend, reinvest the surplus. Tax leverage rarely gets better than these years.
Income shape shifts. Pension drawdown can slow. The plan crosses the bridge and the long retirement begins.
Almost everyone I meet who's planning to stop work between 55 and State Pension has the right total — but the wrong drawing order. Get the sequencing wrong and you can pay 40% tax in early retirement and end up with an IHT problem you didn't need.— Colin Bates · Chapter3
Bring statements for the accounts you have (pensions, ISAs, GIA, cash), your target annual spending, and the age your State Pension starts.
I'll tell you•the bridge in pounds — year-by-year, not as a single average;
•where MPAA, sequencing or wrong-pot withdrawals would damage the plan;
•what the highest-leverage tax-band moves look like across the gap years;
•whether your existing arrangements already line up for this — or don't;
•whether there's enough value in doing proper work together.
If you've already structured it well, you'll hear that. If there's no obvious value, I'll say so.
The 13-page Chapter3 guide on the bridge — the funding sources stack, the contrarian "draw more than you need" move, the 55→57 access-age change, the six bridge errors, the worked example, and the take-with-you sizing worksheet.
Scroll-through web version. 13 panels, ~14 minutes. The bridge funding stack, the sequence-risk visual, the worked example, six bridge errors, and the take-with-you worksheet.
Open in browser → Download · ~270 KB PDFSearchable PDF, text-selectable, clickable links. Share with your accountant. Print and read on a long train journey. Same content as the web version.
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