Step 6: Cashing In | Your Handy Guide to Planning for the Future
At some point, you’ll probably want to free up some money from your investments and pension pots, either just to maintain your standard of living – or to do something big and exciting. It’s all there for the taking, but how can you know what’s a safe amount to withdraw?
“We’re now seeing the rewards of our financial planning while we’re still young enough to enjoy it.”
Simon and Nikki
Beyond the 4% rule
In recent years, we’ve been fascinated by a book called Beyond The 4% Rule by Abraham Okusanya. He’s head of his own investment and retirement research consultancy and creator of Timeline.co, an innovative online application which illustrates sustainable withdrawal strategies in retirement portfolios.
In his book, Abraham writes that the rule of thumb was always that it’s safe to withdraw 4% from your pensions or investments. However, he says that advice doesn’t really stand up anymore. He writes, “Retirement income planning used to be so simple. Most people never had to worry about how to convert their retirement savings into income for the rest of their lives. Today’s low annuity rates, closure of increasing numbers of defined benefit schemes and the Pension Freedoms, introduced by the UK Government in 2015, ripped up the retirement income planning rulebook.” Now he says, the challenge is how to secure a sustainable income from your portfolio that will last you a lifetime. It’s a fascinating read, and as they say, available from all good book shops…
“I don’t worry now about money or what the government is going to do in terms of telling me when I can retire. That just doesn’t bother me anymore.”
Yvonne
Of course, without knowing how long you’ll live, it’s incredibly hard to work anything out exactly. However, the latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics suggest that for a man who is currently 65, he can expect to live on average to around the age of 86 or 87. And for a woman of the same age, it’s slightly higher, between 87 and 88. There’s a handy tool on their website where you can put in your age and sex and find out your life expectancy and your chance of living to 100 years old.
Go to https://www.ons.gov.uk and search for ‘life expectancy calculator’ to give it a go!
Coming up next is ‘Step 7: Don’t Give It Away’.
If you can’t wait that long and would like to read the series in full right now, you can download the entire guide here.
We’re raring to go, so why not give us a call today? We’d love to hear what the future looks like to you and find out whether we’re the right fit to help you get there.
Contact us at theteam@fortitudefp.co.uk or call us on 01327 354321 to start the conversation.