Category: Retirement
Missing out on unclaimed money that could be in your pocket?
According to recent research, higher rate and additional rate taxpayers in the UK leave millions of pounds of pension tax relief unclaimed yearly. This amounts to a staggering total of £1.3 billion over a five-year period. This unclaimed money could be in your pocket instead!
Normal Minimum Pension Age Update – what you need to know
A significant change is on the horizon that may affect when you can access your pension money. We’ll guide you through this change and its potential implications, so you can confidently prepare for retirement.
Taking a personalised approach
No matter what stage of life you’re in, it’s never too early or late to start planning for your retirement. By taking a personalised approach, you can develop a retirement plan that will work for you throughout your life.
Retirement planning for every life stage.
No matter what stage of life you’re in, it’s never too early or late to start planning for your retirement. By taking a personalised approach, you can develop a retirement plan that will work for you throughout your life.
Don’t ‘Sleepwalk’ Into Retirement
As we enter our later years, it's more important than ever to have a solid retirement plan in place. Unfortunately, for many of us, that simply isn't the case. According to recent figures, one in six people over the age of 55 in the UK have no pension savings whatsoever[1].
Cost of Living Crisis
Older people in the UK are increasingly returning to work, [1] according to new research. The cost of living crisis is now affecting many pensioners drastically. The research also found that the proportion of older people who are self-employed has more than doubled over the same period.
Getting Set for Retirement
Welcome to our Guide to Getting Set for Retirement. As you approach the last five years before your retirement, there will be a lot of things to consider. You’ll need to think about your finances, your health, your housing situation and your plans for the future to live comfortably in retirement. In recent years, the changes to pensions legislation have created greater freedom and choice over how pension assets can be used. However, with freedom and choice comes complexity.
Getting ready to retire?
Have you ever wondered what you need to consider as you approach retirement? Whatever your concept of what is a good pension pot, one certainty is that relying on the State Pension alone will not give you a good enough pension to live on comfortably through your retirement.
How Much Do I Need To Save To Retire?
The question, ‘Have I saved enough to retire?’ is a dicult one. It requires a lot of information about you, your family, your income needs in retirement, and an understanding of the various financial vehicles available for saving and investing before it can be answered definitively.
Change to The State Pension Triple Lock
The earnings benchmark of the State Pension triple lock will be temporarily set aside for next year. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) confirmed on 7 September that the State Pension triple lock rule will not be applied for the 2022/23 financial year over concerns of the potential costs involved.
Time for pensions to contribute towards building a better world
As we have been witnessing in recent years and months, climate changes are occurring in every region and globally. A new landmark report from the United Nations on the state of climate science has highlighted modern society’s continued dependence on fossil fuels, which is warming the world at a pace that is unprecedented in the past 2,000 years...
How to Trace Multiple Old Pension Pots
Changed job? Moved house? It’s not always easy to keep track of a pension, especially if you’ve been in more than one scheme or have changed employers throughout your career. Over time, pension schemes close, merge or become renamed. So even if you remember the name of your scheme, it could now be called something else.
The Retirement Clinic
If you are approaching retirement age, it’s important to know your pension is going to finance your plans. Pension legislation is extremely complex and it’s not realistic to expect everyone to understand it completely. But, since we all hope to retire one day, it is important to get to grips with some of the basics.
Live The Life You Want
The current life expectancy in the United Kingdom[1] in 2017 to 2019 was 79.4 years for males and 83.1 years for females, while you can access your pension savings from the age of 55, and the State Pension age is currently 66.
Pension Consolidation & New Freedoms
By the time we have been working for a decade or two, it is not uncommon to have accumulated multiple pension plans. There’s no wrong time to start thinking about pension consolidation, but you might find yourself thinking about it if you’re starting a new job or nearing retirement.
Pensions on Divorce
If you’re going through a divorce, dividing up any pensions you have will usually be one of the largest financial decisions you need to make. Agreeing financial arrangements in your divorce can seem daunting; there are so many misconceptions and myths as to what each party is entitled to that it gets confusing.
Retirement Matters
Perhaps the most common investment advice is to stay invested. But with markets being so volatile, the ease of sticking to that advice has been sorely tested in 2020. Even though we’ve seen global markets bounce sharply from their March lows, understandably there will still be those investing for retirement who remain worried and wonder what the best approach is for the remainder of the year and beyond.
COVID19 Effects on Retirement Planning
The coronavirus (COVID-19) is having a widespread impact across all aspects of financial life, including retirement plans. The current global stock market turbulence, as a consequence of COVID-19, will no doubt be concerning for individuals whose pension savings are invested partly or fully during these volatile market conditions...
New Pensions Freedoms
The pension freedoms, introduced on 6 April 2015, have given retirees a whole host of new options. There is no longer a compulsory requirement to purchase an annuity (a guaranteed income for life) when you retire. The introduction of pension freedoms brought about fundamental changes to the way we can access our pension savings...
A Long Life Needs a Smart Retirement Plan
Your 50s are a crunch time when saving for your retirement. If you’ve already set a retirement savings target but have been neglecting it, you probably can’t afford to delay your planning any longer – and it could well be time for a careful review...