Some people still struggle to make informed retirement decisions. The decisions made at retirement are big ones and have long-term consequences. Many spend years accumulating a large amount of money in pensions and other savings, but really don’t know what that might mean, how much income they can reasonably expect to receive and how best to take that income. It is worrying, but perhaps unsurprising, that a significant number of people do not know how much they have saved for

Ensure your future income will allow you to enjoy the lifestyle you want. Preparing for retirement is like getting ready for a journey – it never goes quite as planned. But the better the plan, the better the outcome. When things go wrong, you want to have the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. You never know what retirement will be like until you get there. It’s also important to remember that retirement is not a single event. It is

How our retirement plans may change in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has touched virtually every part of our lives and is having a widespread impact across all aspects of financial life, including retirement plans. As a result, a significant number of people aged over 50 and in work are potentially considering delaying retirement (15%) by an average of three years, or will continue working indefinitely on a full or part-time basis (26%), as a direct

Preparing ourselves for life to be really strange for some time. The only constant in life is change, which is why individual financial life planning should not be a one-off exercise. Reviewing your finances regularly is essential if you want to stay on track to meet your financial goals. Making sure your finances are in the best possible shape will also make sure you stay on course to achieving everything you want. Everyone has been affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19)

Staying invested and giving your money the greatest chance to grow. 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. Depending

One of the biggest threats to the health of your investments. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a dramatic effect on the global economy. Around the world, economic activity has dried up. Fewer consumers are buying and fewer companies are investing. If you take the view that inflation will go up in the long term, it is worth considering whether your savings and investments could be affected. After all, you need your investments, and the income from them, to keep

Maximising investment returns over a longer life expectancy. There are lots of variables in retirement: how long people will live for, the costs of goods and services they will need, interest rates available on their accumulated savings, and so on. But once you have retired, investing is anything but straightforward. Your finances are a primary consideration, there’s no doubt about it. If you have insufficient income to pay your projected retirement expenses, or less surplus income than you anticipated, you

How secure is the future of your family or business? Projecting ourselves into the future to see what’s around the next bend is not an easy thing to do Given the current situation during this difficult and unsettling time with coronavirus (COVID-19), it’s important to think about how secure the future of your family or business would be in the event that you were no longer around. Understandably, we would rather not think of the time when we’re no longer