Retirement planning is not just for the old. You should start your retirement planning as early as possible.
At Nicholls Stevens we have been specialising in giving retirement advice for nearly 25 years. Carole Nicholls, the Principal of the business is this years winner of the Money Management Retirement Options Planner of the Year Award
Retirement Planning is not about joining your company pension scheme or buying a personal pension and forgetting about it for 40 years. In fact if that is your retirement planning scheme, you will be in for a bit of a shock when you reach your 60th birthday
The very word plan is at the centre of this activity, first, you need a plan, you need to have some idea of when you may want retirement income, this may not be all at one time but spred over a period, what you may do in retirement, where you may live and most imprtantly of all, how much money you may want to live on. Even if you are young you should have a plan, it may need to be reviewed along the way but it is a good starting place
Having a target income is paramount to the plan. You then need to consider how you will achieve this It is likely to arise from a number of sources:
- State Benefits
- Savings
- Pensions built up from employment or self-employment
- Inherited wealth
- Property, including buy to let
The more varied your portfolio, the greater your retirement options are likely to be. It is unlikely that in the future many people will 100% retire at, say age 65, there will be a need for a gradual increase in income, so if you have a number of sources, this will give you greater flexibility
If you are interested in putting together a retirement plan, please let us know. We will work with you reviewing your existing assets and making recommendations to achieve your target income. It is essential to keep any retirement plan in line and so we will instist that regular reviews are carried out, at least annually and most probably bi-annually as you near retirement
If you are close to retirement and have a number of pension plans you may find reading my book; The Pensions Jigsaw; of interest.