Local Life - St Helens - Jan/Feb 2021

20
Make sure your money
lasts as long as you do
It’s fair to say that we all want a comfortable retirement.
Having worked for decades and come to the decision to
end our career, we want to be able to enjoy a lifestyle that
allows us to do things that we can’t currently do because
at least 8 hours a day is taken up by work. Seeing the
world, spending time with family and taking up new
hobbies are all things that are important to our clients as
they enter this new phase of their lives, but how many
people truly know that they have enough money and
income to fulfil all their dreams in retirement?
For us at Callisto and our clients, this question is too
important not to know the answer...
The majority of our clients are at or approaching retirement
and the need to plan ahead comes more into focus as they
get closer to the date when they want to plan for the rest
of their lives. Many of them come to our office wanting to
know if and when they will be able to retire – with many
saying that they would love to retire early.
Some relate cautionary tales of colleagues that have
worked too long and have passed away shortly after
retirement, or friends that just don’t know when to quit
and give up a career they love. In the past financial
planners used to use spreadsheets and their experience
to judge if they thought that a client had saved enough,
now we have dynamic financial planning software that
enables us show clients if their plans are sufficient to live
out their retirement goals.
When our clients have decided that they want to engage
in serious retirement planning, we work with them using
two important tools of financial planning software,
supplemented by a wealth of experience in helping
many other clients transition through to retirement.
The first tool we use is lifetime cash flow planning
software. This programme considers our clients’ current
situation and future plans, and this can dynamically show
them if they have accumulated enough funds to achieve
the retirement they want. We run the cash flow right
through to age 100 to test out that our assumptions are
correct and that our clients will have ‘enough’. For clients
approaching retirement, this process allows them to look
into the future, spot any potential issues and come back to
the present to sort them out. This might involve delaying
retirement a couple of years to benefit from additional
earnings and pension investment, investing more into
pensions and ISAs or taking more risk to generate higher
returns. Of course, some clients may not want to take any
action, but they will at least know at this early stage what
to do to ensure that they never run out of money.
The second tool we use is sustainable income planning.
This software looks at a client’s retirement ‘pot’ and
projected other income (such as final salary pensions
or state pensions) and tests whether the pot is enough
to give them a successful retirement based on historic
portfolio returns. This is essential for anyone
contemplating income drawdown from a personal
pension. The system produces a withdrawal policy
statement, which allows us to plan with our clients at the
outset and set a rules-based framework to ‘course correct’
when markets run into difficulties for instance.
Some people are prepared to guess at retirement
planning and hope that all will turn out well. With our
help, you can used evidence based systems to make
sound financial decisions, that will benefit you and your
family. Call us now for a free, no obligation, meeting.
If we can help you get your financial
affairs in order please contact our
office on 01744 881421.
Andrew Platt
CFP TM Chartered MCSI
The value of investments (including property) and the income derived from them may go down as well as up.
Callisto Wealth Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Our FCA reference is 607698 and our listing can be found at register.fcaorg.uk