Planning for your retirement can be exciting. However, with a substantial number of things to consider, you may find the process slightly overwhelming.
Therefore, it’s important to spend some time rethinking how to approach your retirement.
Read on, to learn what you can do when planning for your retirement, and help secure the confidence to invest in your future.
Seek expert financial advice
Advice from a financial expert is arguably the most essential part of approaching your retirement.
If retirement planning seems daunting and uncertain, why not seek the advice of a professional who’s experienced in this area, and understands your concerns and challenges?
For instance, Netwealth, a pioneering wealth management service, offers unique and professional financial advice for all its clients, with the choice of one-off or continuous advice. They also provide a range of free online financial planning tools to help you make projections about how your financial outcome could turn out.
A financial adviser can refine your financial plan, and help you overcome any obstacle you are likely to face.
With a range of intuitive tools and extensive knowledge, a professional team can give you the assurance you need to execute a comprehensive approach to your retirement.
If a strategic and clear plan is what you’re looking for, your chosen experts can incorporate every aspect of your unique financial situation, as well as bring to light things you might have missed, to give you perfectly tailored advice.
Re-evaluate your retirement goals
A huge part of retirement planning is to devise a set of goals you wish to achieve. However, it might be the case that your retirement goals need re-evaluating.
Your aims could potentially be unrealistic in accordance with your current finances, or maybe you just haven’t paid them as much thought as necessary.
Consider these questions when you picture your retirement:
- How early do you want to retire? – This is possibly the most pondered question. Do your finances enable you to retire when you wish? Naturally, you can only access State Pensions once you reach State Pension age, and personal pensions usually after you reach 55, depending on your pension scheme’s rules.
- What style of retirement do you wish to live? – It’s important to know what retirement lifestyle you want. Are you travelling frequently, or settled in one spot? Are you living alone? What standard of living would you like? Will the value of your assets realistically support your ambitions?
- How long do you expect your retirement to last? – This is an underappreciated question for many retirement planners. It’s not uncommon to live much longer than expected, especially due to advances in medicine and our standard of living. Therefore, have you planned for your money in retirement to cover this length of time?
Once again, an expert adviser will know exactly what to include in your retirement plan, ensuring your goals are achievable, as well as aligning with your vision.
Calculate and assess your investments
The value of your investments play a pivotal role in your retirement planning, which is why it’s vital that you’ve correctly calculated how effective your contributions are towards achieving your goals.
Perhaps your current retirement contributions, if left unadjusted, will not give you adequate funds to sustain your desired retirement lifestyle, or allow you to retire as early as you’d like.
The right financial adviser can help you plan your investments to not only align with your retirement goals, but ensure you’re making the right amount and frequency of contributions to fuel your current financial journey.
Also, the world is ever-changing, and professional guidance can make a big difference in planning ahead for any unfavourable fluctuations.
Inflation rates, for instance, can change from month to month, and the future effects could be detrimental to your retirement plan, and how long your finances may last.
Your own personal goals might evolve, too. You may develop new aspirations for your retirement lifestyle, or want to change the age you retire.
You may have a new partner you might need to include in your plan, or want to accommodate for the next generation.
With such a variety of possibilities and avenues for your retirement plan, it’s hugely important to have an expert that can guide you through the financial terrain.
Investing in your future needn’t be overcomplicated, nor bring uncertainty and stress. With an experienced financial adviser to guide you, you can build a solid foundation on which to design your dream retirement plan.
Please note, the value of your investments can go down as well as up.
