Older savers should avoid making rash decisions about their pension cash based on “fear and rumour”, experts urged this week. The warning came as figures showed a rise in the sums people were pulling out of their retirement pots. Of this, £18.3bn was tax-free cash – an increase of 62% on the £11.3bn the previous year. Eamonn Prendergast, a chartered financial adviser at Palantir Financial Planning, said pension pots were “meant to last decades, not be raided in panic. The figures came after what some called an “inheritance tax raid” on unspent pension money that was announced last October.