Having a choice

It is expected that the number of people who receive a State pension is going to increase by almost a third over the next 25 years.

There is a good deal of change taking place both in terms of how the State pension is calculated and the age at which such benefits are going to be available so it is vitally important, if you want some real retirement  choices, to do something in addition to the State pension.

A number of clients I have worked with in recent weeks have seen how important private pension provision actually is.

Had they been dependent just upon State pension benefits it would have been a real struggle to do the things in retirement that they wanted to do.

As we sat and worked out what post retirement expenditure looked like it became abundantly clear that even the maximum possible State pension would simply have been not enough.

And yet when they could see how much private provision was worth it was always the case that by adding back in the State pension their expenditure target could be met.

Making the right at retirement choices is important and needs a lot of consideration so some recent research by the insurance company Legal & General was quite worrying showing that 1 in 10 people spend less than an hour thinking about this subject.

If you want a choice about what your life will look like post retirement then there are some important steps to take.

Save as much as you possibly can.

Not necessarily in a pension plan (other types of savings can work as well).

Think of the State pension system as one of the building blocks of retirement income and not the only one.

And finally put some time and effort into thinking about what retirement means to you and how much you will need to have all the choices you want.

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