Hi lads n lasses I reached retirement age on the 5th August just gone. Any advice would be really welcome. I'm still working part-time driving young vulnerable kids to and from school during term time. I have a few pensions kicking around plus obviously my state pension. Any good financial advisors about. It feels like a bit of a minefield. Cheers
I'm no financial advisor but make sure you're tax efficient. I assume you're aware you can draw the 1st 25% of your pension tax free but you might want to leave that to a later date depending on what you would do with the money. If you're drawing down lump sums from multiple pension after the tax free amounts, make sure its in different tax years.
Keep working. I spent 2 years kicking my heels then got a part time job. Still going after 6 or 7 years. Only 2 days per week but seeing as my wife still works full time, I need something other than a renewed interest in golf. As for financial advice............. mmmmm
Welcome to the club. Because of my health I couldn't do a part time job so took a new hobby up. I bought a decent learner camera and a few different lenses and off I went. I don't do it for gain, no selling or owt like that, just for my own pleasure but still a rank, rank amateur. Hope ya get ya financials sorted, it is a bloody minefield.
As ever, everything depends on your circumstances, final salary, annuity, SIPP etc. rule of thumb is 5% draw down per year though, with controllable investments in low risk like guilt bonds and blue chip dividend stocks.
It really isn't .... unless your circumstances are complicated. Hard to comment further without knowing what you have etc. As a general rule, assuming there's a Mrs QC, it's possibly a good idea to keep any final salary pensions as final salary (meaning not to take the, on the face of it, attractive / tempting cash transfer value). Final salary pension payments bring the certainty of income, and also a spouse's pension should anything happen to you. And then it may well make sense to bring all your defined contribution pensions into one SIIP scheme (assuming you have more than one). It's fairly easy & painless to transfer them, and easy to manage them in a platform like Vanguard or AJ Bell (both Which recommended, and also personally recommended). When I was approaching retirement and into the first couple of months I spent a lot of time reading about pensions, investing, basic taxation, and related. It's worth taking time to at least understand the basics yourself, as you are likely to care more about your money than anyone else and all others are after at the end of the day is a slice of it!! Most of the industry is happy to keep people thinking it's complicated and a minefield, and that they know what's going to happen next, etc etc - they are there to make money for themselves or their shareholders. J Bogle. Little book of common sense investing. JLCollins. Simple path to wealth. D Sawyer. Reset: How to restart your life and get FU money. In that order, with the last one being a UK based book after you've understood the general principles from the 1st 2 US based ones (although the principles are fairly easy to 'translate' to UK). Free YT blogs like Chris Bourne, Damien Talks Money, etc are worth following too. I wasn't ignorant to tax, savings, investing in earlier years, but I wish I'd read / knew the above a few decades ago. I'd honestly be minted now (instead of 'just' very nicely comfortable and relatively untroubled in relation to money matters). Personally I won't be paying any money for a financial advisor but might consider paying for tax advice if my situation was more complicated or if I had more to leave when I'm gone. But that's just my situation; yours could be very different for various reasons and paying for advice might make sense (or might not). Btw, I haven't for one minute regretted retiring! My wife was part time to start with, but has now also retired fully.
First thing you might want to look at is consolidating the pensions into one place. Something like Vanguard or AJ Bell. Keeps your costs down. Open a stocks and shares Isa for you and her too and stuff 20K in each one if the lump sum allows. You might then just buy some hi yielding dividend paying income bonds or etfs that track the us / European / UK markets and asia pacific emerging markets and take the income they generate. key is to be diversified across sectors and regions. With your state pension plus a part time job you may be close to tax thresholds so you may find the state pension and work hours might do you until you can research a bit more about drawdown. It may feel weird, but have a conversation with an artificial intelligence app about the basics. All it does is scrape info from the Internet but present it in a better way than you having to Google stuff.
QC,,, I dont know whee you are in Hull, but I was in exactly the same boat as you last year... I went to Morgan Williams on Willerby Road, theyre just excellent.. I feel quite confident leaving the to it..
At the moment your Isa allowance is 20k per year and any interest earned is tax free. If you can afford it open a second Isa for the next financial year which will equate to 40k worth of interest being tax free. If you are trying to avoid tax on savings consider premium bonds. Any winnings being tax free.
I took 'good financial advice' off a recommended financial advisor and he robbed me blind. My private pensions wouldn't stand me a decent week end away. So in your case it sounds like you are well provided for so my advice would be too stop worrying about how much money you have and spend what you have whilst you have the health and time to do it. The clock is ticking............
Very poor returns on Premium Bonds you might as well have a ordinary share account and pay the 20% earnings tax
Draw your state pension so you maximise all you’ve paid in - no point deferring it Consplidate pensions under one umbrella platform Work out your average spend based on last two years inc hols nights out etc , add inflation and calculate what you need per month on that / it will dictate draw down and keep your tax liability to the minimum . I retired earlier this year - enjoying the summer but may look for some part time work for the winter Got three hobbies I always wanted to do
