What are you going to do, when you’ve got all that free time on your hands?  Retirement planning involves thinking about your plans for the future now, and investing money with the aim of making it grow in value as time passes.

Everyone has different ideas about what they’d like to do during retirement.  You may want to travel abroad, move home or simply spend more time with the family – or you might want to carry on working for a while, after the normal retirement age.  Whatever you feel like doing, most people need a regular income to turn their retirement plans into a reality.

Although the Government provides a small state pension to everyone who qualifies, it’s important to invest as much money as you can while you’re working.  How you invest that money depends on your circumstances, and which kind of investments you feel comfortable with.  Your pension can be a very efficient way of using tax breaks to your advantage, as the Government will give you tax relief on all of your contributions. 

What types of retirement planning are there?

In general, most people choose a personal pension of some kind – such as a stakeholder pension – but there are other ways of investing for retirement, such as ISAs.  The advantage with an ISA is that you can still get at your money whenever you need it before you retire.  A pension locks it away until you take it as retirement income.  Both options offer different tax advantages, for example you get tax relief on pension contributions but not on ISA investments.  There are many ways to build a retirement fund such as through property purchase, collecting valuable assets, and inheriting money.

It’s up to you what type of retirement planning you decide on and how you access the money that you save.  The important thing is to have a plan – and that’s where an IFA can help.  An IFA can help you make retirement plans that fit in with your lifestyle, your risk profile and levels of affordability.

Questions you might like to ask an IFA…

What charges will I pay on different retirement plans?

How much of my money is for short term, medium term and long term?

When can I access my pension funds, how will the money be paid to me?

When I die, what happens to the pension fund I’d saved?