Financial Planning: What to do When Approaching Retirement

There’s a lot to consider when approaching retirement if you want to ensure the best financial outcome that helps you meet your retirement goals.

Therefore, it’s important to have a financial plan in place to make sure you have the most effective approach to your retirement, that’s best suited to help build your wealth effectively.

Read on, to learn the essential steps to take when building your own financial plan for your retirement.

1. Seek financial planning advice

Arguably, the most essential step to take when building your retirement plan is to seek expert advice from a modern wealth management service.

You’ll receive professional guidance from financial planning advisers that will help you create, monitor, and execute your financial plan in a way that’s best suited to grow your wealth for retirement.

Your adviser will take on board your current financial circumstances, as well as your challenges and concerns, and use this to tailor their guidance so it’s uniquely designed for you.
They’ll help you build a financial plan that aims to not only grow your wealth effectively, but brings you financial confidence and reassurance in your journey.

2. Establish your financial goals

The next step to take when financial planning for retirement is to establish your financial goals, both for the long and short term.

In order to reach a successful financial outcome when you retire, you need to set the right goals and have a clear outline of how you’ll reach them. Your financial adviser can help you create goals that are not only beneficial for your wealth, but achievable in regards to your current circumstances.

These goals can vary depending on what you want from your retirement, such as:

• Retiring at a certain age
• Having a certain amount in your pension pot when you reach retirement
• Living a certain retirement lifestyle
• Having specific assets (e.g., property, cars, art) when you retire

Once you’ve set these goals, your adviser can help you implement a clear, concise, and effective plan to reach them. They’ll factor in every aspect of your current financial circumstances, as well as any external factors which may impact your plan, such as inflation, tax allowances, and the health of the economy and markets.

3. Create an optimal structure for your pension contributions

Another core component of building your retirement plan is to create an optimal structure for your pension contributions, so you achieve your goals as efficiently as possible.
Expert advice from your wealth manager will guide you through what contributions you need to make in order to reach your goals, and ensure you grow your wealth purposefully for when you retire.

They’ll also have the knowledge to help you structure your contributions so that as much of your money is sheltered from tax as possible. This will be through your pension’s annual and lifetime allowance, which as of the tax year 2022/2023, are:

• Annual pension allowance – £40,000
• Lifetime pension allowance – £1,073,100

With the right approach to pension contributions, you can build your wealth in a way that’s optimised for your retirement goals.

4. Consider ongoing financial advice

When executing your financial plan for retirement, you can consider seeking ongoing financial advice as you continue through the process of your plan.

Your financial circumstances are often vulnerable to change, whether through personal changes – such as new career paths or getting married, or external impacts – such as changing inflation rates and tax regulations, or shifting economic and market sentiment.

Therefore, you may need a financial adviser to help you review and adjust your plan regularly, so that you build optimal wealth resilience in preparation for changes, and consistently remain on track to reach your retirement goals.

If you’re approaching retirement and you’re concerned about the success of your financial outcome, seek the expert guidance of a wealth manager now, to ensure a more effective approach to building your wealth.

Please note, the value of your investments can go down as well as up.