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50<br />
Approaching Retirement?<br />
5 Ways a Financial Planner can help.<br />
If you’re approaching retirement, you may be thinking about<br />
whether your pension pot and other investments are able to<br />
support your income needs. Here are five different ways that<br />
an experienced, well-qualified financial planner can help you<br />
to better understand and prepare for your retirement journey.<br />
They can help you understand what you want<br />
from retirement<br />
A planner will be able to help you work out your plans for<br />
retirement, whatever they are, and assess whether they<br />
are financially feasible. They can act as a sounding board<br />
for your retirement goals, and help you decide how to<br />
approach them. Whether you want to go travelling, pay<br />
off your mortgage, give money to your family, or look for<br />
ways to flexibly take income, your planner can be there to<br />
help you work it all out and plan with confidence.<br />
They can give you a greater sense of confidence<br />
and reassurance<br />
A common worry for retirees is that they might not have<br />
enough to live the lifestyle they want. Fortunately, a good<br />
financial planner like Callisto can provide you with a longterm<br />
written financial plan to help to reassure you that you<br />
have the money to achieve your financial goals. Tools like<br />
sustainable income planning software can help you to rest<br />
easy, knowing that you’ll have enough money to enjoy<br />
your future lifestyle. By mapping out your expenditure<br />
and income, a planner can make a reliable forecast and<br />
see how long it should last while enjoying the lifestyle you<br />
want.<br />
They can reassess your exposure to investment<br />
risk<br />
Throughout your investing life, you may have had a higher<br />
risk tolerance, and as you approach retirement you want<br />
the returns on your money to be a little more stable.<br />
Alternatively, perhaps you’ve always preferred to be safer<br />
with your investments, but your money isn’t growing at<br />
the rate you were hoping, and you may not have enough<br />
to see you through. In these cases, speaking to a planner<br />
can be vital in helping you assess your investments and<br />
your risk profile and working with you to see whether your<br />
investment strategy needs to change.<br />
They can help you to draw your income in a taxefficient<br />
way<br />
If you draw too much of your pension too quickly, you may<br />
accidentally trigger additional tax charges. Once you turn<br />
55 you can access your pension. Once you do, you can<br />
typically only take 25% of your savings tax-free, and the<br />
rest could be subject to Income Tax.<br />
This could be an issue if you want to take a large amount<br />
from your pension in a lump sum and you may push<br />
yourself into a higher tax bracket paying more tax on<br />
your pension than you had initially thought. By working<br />
with a financial planner, you can avoid any potential tax<br />
implications and ensure that you get the most out of your<br />
wealth.<br />
They can help you with your estate planning<br />
Estate planning is one of the most difficult financial<br />
situations to prepare for, but a planner can help you take<br />
the steps needed to reduce your Inheritance Tax (IHT)<br />
bill and ensure your wealth is passed to those you want.<br />
While it isn’t easy to think about, it’s crucial to plan for.<br />
A good financial planner like Callisto will break down<br />
important considerations surrounding IHT and establish<br />
whether you’re likely to have an IHT liability that you could<br />
plan to legitimately avoid. From there, they may advise<br />
you to make gifts in your lifetime to reduce the overall<br />
value of your estate. They may encourage you to write<br />
or revise your will so that they know who you want your<br />
beneficiaries to be. Then they can work out a plan to taxefficiently<br />
manage your estate.<br />
Andrew Platt<br />
CFP TM Chartered MCSI<br />
A pension is a long-term investment not normally accessible until age 55 (57 from <strong>Apr</strong>il 2028). The value of your investments (and any income from them) can go down as well as up,<br />
which would have an impact on the level of pension benefits available. Your pension income could also be affected by the interest rates at the time you take your benefits.<br />
The tax implications of pension withdrawals will be based on your individual circumstances, tax legislation and regulation which are subject to change in the future. You should seek<br />
advice to understand your options at retirement.
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