If your lifetime of financial planning has been successful, you will be anticipating your imminent retirement. You may be excited about the prospects of world travel and achieving all your outstanding life goals. Alternatively, you may have concerns about how you will fill your time. However, with many years of effective planning you should be financially secure. Initially, you will need to consider your retirement income options such as Income Drawdown and Annuities. In addition, should you exercise the option; you will also have to decide how best to use the tax free cash from your pension fund.
Phasing your retirement plans is often an extremely effective method of maximising your financial resources. It will also be important to ensure your investment portfolio is producing the level of income and capital growth potential you require, without exposing your capital to an unacceptable level of risk.
You are normally healthier in your early retirement years and are likely to need more income and capital to meet your goals. As you get older, your state of health may reduce your appetite for world travel and other physically taxing activities and your income and capital requirements may reduce accordingly. That is why your pension and investment strategies should continue to be reviewed throughout your retirement years.
“ . . . Simon also helped us to visualise our retirement lifestyle and our retirement journey soon appeared clear. A robust strategy was designed, aiming at achieving our goals and we felt more comfortable about our future. Over the years our circumstances and needs have changed and it has been important to fine tune the original strategy. . . After trusting Simon’s advice we have now achieved our original goal and are now in a position to reap the rewards, before we get too old to enjoy it! We have been extremely happy with the service from Paragon - our only regret is that we didn't talk to them earlier!”
Hedley and Maxine Bardsley (March 2010)
". . . when we were facing a shortfall in our retirement funds, we benefited from Simon's recommendations enabling us to build our pension funds to a comfortable level. Then, as we faced retirement, Simon helped us to create a robust retirement strategy to maximise our income. We have also benefited from ensuring that our Wills are effective and our eventual inheritance tax liability is minimised . . . ”
Brian and Isobel Holliss (February 2010)