At 75, You have been enjoying retirement for a while, what do you need to keep doing now to make sure you get the best outcome.
I am ten years into retirement, what do I need to keep doing now?
You have been enjoying retirement for a while. You know all the fixed pension payments you get from your State and final salary pensions. You also have some remaining pension pots you need to last the final years of retirement.
You may also be thinking about putting some aside to pass on, or just buying a guaranteed future income.
Assuming you are not paying an adviser for ongoing advice, what do you need to do now?
Future income
Your future income each year will be made up of the fixed parts. This is usually the State and any final salary pensions you have. Plus any flexible parts, the income you can take each year from any remaining pensions and savings pots.
As you have been getting your fixed payments for some time now, you will know what these are each month and when and how they increase.
You will also know your monthly outgoings well, so by definition, what extra you need from the flexible parts.
The only unknown is will the remaining pots last the course of retirement?
It’s very likely you now have easy access your latest pension pot values. Hopefully, you have built a plan in Guiide, you have been following it for some time and have also added live updating values to our Dashboard.
These live values link directly to our modelling tools to show you if everything remains on track under a number of scenarios.
If your plan still looks good..
In our Dashboard page you can find out if your current live pots are expected to last, just by logging in there.
If so, all is good and you can continue to keep taking your income as expected in your plan, without any worry for now.
In addition, if you can see a reasonable amount expected to be left in your pots, you may wish to specifically aim to pass an amount on. You can add this amount to your plan to try to target having at least this much to pass on. It can also be used later by yourself, if needed, should you live longer than average.
Another option if things are going well is use any expected excess to buy some more guaranteed income now, or even completely guarantee your income.
For many at 80 and beyond, they may not want to be tracking this anymore, but simply just want a fully guaranteed income payable for the remainder of their life.
If your plan shows shortfalls….
First question… did your plan have an increasing income?
Thinking about this. Are you really going to be spending the same in today’s money at 85 as you do now? It is possible you may be less mobile, be holidaying less, enjoying less of your current activities?
If you had an increasing income in your plan, you may look to change this to a flat income. You can see if this is a simple way to remove any shortfalls. This will stay the same income level, but will buy less and less in future due to inflation. This will match many typical retiree’s actual spending pattern past 75.
What if your plan already has a flat income and still shows shortfalls? Making a small reduction to total future income now may remove any shortfalls, before they become large. Guiide can solve this for you with just one click in our Design page.
Keep tracking
Until you have fully secured everything by using your remaining pots to buy a lifetime guaranteed income, you will need to keep tracking your plan each year, as your pots move up and down.
Guiide provides this holding hand throughout your whole retirement. It allows you to see how to make any small changes needed now should shortfalls become a problem, or the options which may arise if things go well. Just use it whenever you need.
