A financial adviser will typically recommend that you start preparing for retirement as early as you can.
But what if you’re in your 40s or 50s and have only just started thinking about pension planning?
Have you missed out on the possibility of enjoying a secure and comfortable retirement?
Well, not necessarily, as there are still plenty of things you can do to secure your future.
Review your finances
It’s important to take a holistic and detailed look at every aspect of your current finances, such as your savings, investments and workplace pensions you may have in place.
Having a true picture of your starting point puts you in a better position to devise a realistic strategy and set attainable goals.
Define your objectives
Your retirement plan will depend partly on what you want from later life. Do you want to spend more time with your family? Travel the world? Indulge in passions or pursue new hobbies?
If you have a good idea of exactly what type of lifestyle you envisage, you can create a financial strategy with that firmly in mind.
Check you have a workplace pension
If you’re currently in work, make sure you’re enrolled in your workplace pension scheme and receiving employee contributions.
Track down lost pensions
If you’ve had other jobs in the past, you may have been auto-enrolled into multiple workplace pensions. As you move from one role to the next, it can be easy to overlook them, so it’s well worth tracking them down and perhaps consolidating this money into a single scheme.
Contribute as much as you can to pensions
If you have a workplace pension and have recently set up a private scheme, then save as much as you can. Even if you’re starting to save relatively late in life, you can still benefit from a healthy degree of compound interest to bolster your retirement income.
Cut unnecessary expenses
Since you have a relatively short time to save for the future, you might need to make big decisions about what you do with your money. This could include identifying unnecessary expenses that you could cut in order to free up the cash for your retirement savings.
Downsize your property
It may be that your home is larger than you need, perhaps because your children have grown up and left home. In that case, it could be well worth selling up and moving to a smaller, more suitable property. Any money left over from the sale could be put towards your retirement savings.
Moving to a smaller property may also reduce your monthly outgoings, from home insurance to general maintenance costs, allowing you to put a bit more aside for the future.
Delay your retirement date
If you’re late to pension saving, then staying in full-time work for longer could be a good way to bolster your retirement income. The longer you can keep earning an income, the more you can increase your savings and delay having to draw from your retirement funds.
Revise your investment strategy
Updating your investment strategy could be an option worth exploring in order to generate income for your retirement, although you should be careful about the level of risk you’re willing to face in order to catch up.
With that in mind, it might be a good idea to work alongside an financial adviser. They’ll help you create an investment strategy and offer professional advice that’s in your best interests.
Repay high-interest debts
Getting on top of your debts and prioritising high-interest repayments is a good idea at any time, but if you’re late starting to save for retirement, this could be a particularly effective way to free up cash that could help you fund your future.
Planning for retirement can be daunting for anybody, regardless of your age, but if you’ve missed out on valuable years of saving for later life, you might feel particularly overwhelmed.
But help is at hand. Get in touch with our team of financial planners and we’ll be happy to speak with you, so you can approach the future with confidence and peace of mind.
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