There are two basic approaches you can take depending on whether you want to prioritise capital preservation or security of income. Either you take the reduced pension early with the SWR withdrawals from your stash funding the difference between the pension and your spending, or you take the DB at normal retirement age and use part of your stash to backfill for it it the gap between retirement and the pension starting.
We have gone for the second option as we want the security of the bigger guaranteed income. My wife has a public sector DB of about £10k pa from age 65. She retired at 54 so 11 x 10 = £110k of the stash was set aside in a bridging pot to backfill for her pension.
We haven't got there yet, but are planning a 'part way' scenario.
If you log on to the teacher website, you can enter proposed retirement dates, and see the actuarial reduction. My wife has a teacher and 2 council DB pensions. We're covering an initial period with our stash, then she'll take one pension which is payable from age 60, then then the others, phased in. So she has a decent DB pension, takes some actuarial reduction, but gets to finish early.
Of course what ever you do, the state pension won't be received until normal retirement age, so any plans need to account of this also. But make sure you've both qualified for a full state pension (if you can) before finishing work.
There is a 6 year age gap between me and MrsA. We have a tortuous plan of money being phased in at various times, including 3x government/teacher DB pensions, an additional DB pension, 3x private pension stashes and ISA's/savings between us.
Hope my spreadsheet can cope!
