Moving into retirement

The first step when you’re making the move to retirement is to think about what you want from your life in the years ahead. Maybe you’d like to move house, upgrade your car or travel more frequently. Then there’s how you use your day. Perhaps you’ll still work part-time (which means some extra income coming in), volunteer, take up a new hobby or dedicate more time to an existing one.

Use our retirement saving guidelines to get an idea of how much you’ll need to save each year to fund your lifestyle in retirement. From there, you’ll be able to set yourself a savings target to work towards.

During their working lives, the average person will work for about 11 employers*. So, you may find you have a number of pensions with a few different providers. It’s important to know where these are and how much is saved in them, so you can get a good picture of your overall savings and investments.

If you’re unsure what you have, you can track down lost pensions with the Government’s Pension Tracing Service.

If you’re planning to retire in the next few years, you may want to start thinking about what you’re going to do with the pension pot you’ve built up. There’s a great deal of flexibility about how you take an income from your savings. That means it’s a good idea to check out the pros and cons of the various options, and see how they will each affect your lifestyle, the tax you pay and the amount you can pass on to your family.

The government’s Pension Wise service offers free, impartial guidance to help you understand your options at retirement. Guidance is available at pensionwise.gov.uk or over the phone on 0800 011 3797.

While many people move pensions around during their working lives, some don’t realise that there are good reasons to do this just before they retire as well. For a start, if you’ve changed jobs a few times, it’s likely you’ll have several schemes in different places. Bringing them together can make it much easier to plan – and help you look after your money in the years ahead as well.

Equally, it could open up more investment options or more types of retirement income, as some pension schemes don’t offer the full range. It might even save you money as costs can vary significantly between providers – and over a long retirement, small changes in price can lead to a big difference in how much you have.

Pension transfers are a complex area and may not be suitable for everyone. Before going ahead with a pension transfer, we strongly recommend you compare the benefits, charges and features offered.

After your house, your pension could be the single biggest asset you have. Unfortunately, this makes it a target for scams. There are lots out there, and some can seem very convincing, but the usual rules of thumb apply. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is and you should never act on anything without checking it thoroughly first (particularly when someone contacts you without you asking them to). Learn about the common threats to your financial security, discover what we’re doing to keep you safe and find out where to get help if you need it.

Check your retirement age in PlanViewer to make sure it reflects your current retirement goals and plans.

It’s important to keep this up to date as it drives the allocations of any automated investment strategies you may be invested in. It will also ensure you receive relevant important information from Fidelity that is better suited to your current retirement plans and you’ll get more up to date projections about your retirement savings which can assist your planning.

Remember, the earlier you retire, the longer your savings will need to last. And the later you retire, the more time you spend earning a salary and potentially boosting your pension savings.

A small increase to your contributions now, can still make a difference because, when it comes to saving, the longer you can contribute, the longer your savings have to grow. Time is a powerful tool and continuous contributions can grow to a sizeable sum, thanks to the benefits of compounding.

You can also consider keeping your money invested during retirement to give your savings more time to grow. Remember, the value of your pension savings can go down as well as up so you may get back less than you have saved.

After years and years of saving, there can be a strong temptation to start enjoying the money you’ve put aside. However, some decisions can’t be reversed – even if you quickly realise that they weren’t right for you. Taking the time to do some research, and speaking to an authorised financial adviser if you need to, can make a world of difference to your income in retirement.