Retiring is one of the biggest events in your life. You have been working for almost all of your adult life. It is an area where you have a considerable amount of expertise, you are respected for what you do, it takes up more time than anything else you do, it is the source of […]
Retiring is a huge change for people, not just financially but emotionally. For decades, you have gotten up every morning with somewhere to go. You met and worked with people who have some of the same interests as you, often spending more time with work colleagues than your own family. Then it ends abruptly. Lots […]
Years ago, anyone who had a work pension had a had a defined benefit pension. They didn’t have to worry about investment risk. Then came the defined contribution pension. You either invested in the With Profits fund or a Managed fund. At retirement, you purchased an annuity and that was the end of any concern […]
The Report of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare was published last week. At 547 pages, this is a lengthy document and there is a huge amount of recommendations in it. As there is enough just on pensions, that is what I am going to concentrate on now. I will come back to some of […]
Even before annuity rates dropped to the low rates that they are today, annuities had very much given way to the ARF as the retirement option of choice. Even though they were giving up guarantees and assuming all the investment risk, retirees preferred to have control of their own retirement fund. One of the biggest […]
Ever go to conference? Ever notice that people return to the same seat after breaks. If it is two day conference, everyone will be sitting in the seats they had the day before. We are creatures of habit and we like routine. One certainty we love the most is getting that pay cheque every month. […]
When we think about investment returns, we think of long term averages. It doesn’t work like that though with returns varying from year to year. If you are assuming a 6% annualised return, there will be years of double digit returns but also years of negative returns. This is fine when contributing to your pension. […]
There is a vulnerability to retiring and not earning an income anymore. Instead of money coming in every month and your savings increasing, you are spending that money that you have saved over the decades. And not knowing how long we will live for means we don’t know how long our savings have to last […]
You have spent your working lifetime saving. Putting money away into your pension and an extra few quid when you had the money. By being frugal and living below your means, you have accumulated a substantial amount of money and you have reached the financial planners holy grail…you are financially independent. You are now in […]
As people near retirement, they tend to de-risk their pension investment by moving it into bonds and cash before they mature their pension plan. But will most retirees investing in ARF’s post retirement, should they really be reducing their risk exposure at all? Annuity The idea to de-risk your pension came about originally when the […]