If your husband belongs to a company pension scheme he should be able to draw his pension now but if he can afford not to draw it and survive by getting a part-time job he should try and do so because if his pension scheme stipulates normal retirement at 65 his pension will almost certainly be discounted by around 5% for every year under 65, which in his case would be 10 years x 5% = 50%. So the pension he would draw would be 50% of the normal pension. He should talk to the person in his company who administers the pension scheme. He will not be entitled to any State Pension until the age of 65. You don't state what occupation your husband has but companies like B & Q and Tesco have a good reputation for employing older people. If he gets a redundancy payment this might be offset against any job seeker allowances he is entitled to. If he is fortunate enough to get a redundancy payment of over �30,000, anything above this allowance is taxable but you can sometimes get round this by putting any money over �30,000 into a pension scheme. But for this to work I believe the employer would have to effect the payment. If you don't have a company pension scheme, an indiependent financial advisor might be able to advise on how to set up a personal pension to take any excess.