Reached your half-century? How to plan for retirement

2nd January 2019

Once you reach 50, it’s time to get serious about planning your retirement. True, it could still seem ages away, and you may not be thinking of giving up work anytime soon. However, putting a retirement plan together will help you understand what your finances will look like when you decide to take life easy.

Retirement planning isn’t just about getting your money organised, although that’s vitally important. Depending on your circumstances, you may want to think about completely changing your lifestyle, moving home, travelling the world, or simply putting your feet up. And like all big projects in life, the more time you can invest in thinking it through, the better.

Start by taking stock

Getting financial advice will help you get a true perspective on how your pension planning is shaping up. We will help you work out the value of your current plans, including your state pension entitlement. If you’ve lost track of pensions held with past employers, now is a good time to get them traced. If you’ve several pension plans, we will be able to help you work out if it would make sense to consolidate them.

And don’t just think about pensions; having money in ISAs will help in planning your retirement income tax-efficiently.

Do your sums

Don’t leave it until the last minute to work out how much money you’ll need to live on in retirement. Some costs will go down, like travel to work, but others like utility bills are likely to increase as you spend more time at home. Factor in the cost of the travel, holidays and hobbies you’re likely to want to pursue when you have more time.