While retirement may not currently be high on your priority list, you should take steps now to ensure that you will have the freedom and the means to achieve a comfortable retirement when the time comes. You could spend a third of your life as a retired person, and by taking action now, you can help to make this period as financially secure as possible.

A strategy for retirement

Your retirement planning strategy will be determined by a number of factors, including your age and the number of years before retirement. However, there are some other key issues to consider:
  • Do you have a company pension scheme?
  • Are you self-employed?
  • How much can you invest for your retirement?
  • How much state pension will you receive?

Company pension schemes

There are two kinds of company pension scheme, into which you and your employer may make contributions. A defined benefit scheme pays a retirement income related to the amount of your earnings, while a defined contribution scheme instead reflects the amount invested and the underlying investment fund performance. In both cases, you will have access to tax-free cash as well as to the actual pension. The impact of the early-noughties stock market downturn was one key factor that resulted in many final salary schemes being underfunded and a decision was taken by many firms to close such defined benefit schemes. Many experts consider that this type of scheme will cease to exist over the next few years, as a result of the current situation. Where companies do provide company pensions these are now almost always defined contribution schemes.

Private options

If you are not in a company scheme, you should make your own arrangements, since relying on the state pension is already questionable and will become more so with each passing year.

SIPPs

In response to poor performances from pension fund managers, some retirement savers have switched their pension savings into Self Invested Personal Pension policies (SIPPs) – a form of personal pension plan which gives the investor more control over how the funds are invested.