Situation

Ms D came to us, she was aged 58 and due to Covid and the additional time she had been spending with her family, she decided that she wanted to reduce her working hours.

Ms D was unsure as to whether she could afford to sustain her standard of living by only working part-time. But she knew that she had a number of pensions from working for various companies during her life. Ms D knew the approximate values of her policies, but didn’t know how they were invested or whether she could use them to supplement her income.

Outcome

Firstly, it was important to assess Ms D’s expenditure. We then looked at what her part-time income would be and looked at the difference. We also assessed her full financial position, looking at her various products – the value of these and how they were invested.
From this, we were able to create a cashflow model where we mapped out what Ms D’s finances would look like and how they would grow based on average market movements for someone of her specific risk profile.

We could conclude a few points:

• The value of Ms D’s pensions and investments were such that it would be affordable to take partial retirement and supplement her income with some money from her pension (she is able to draw from her pension being over 55). She could leave the majority of pension monies invested so they would continue to move with the market.
• Based on average returns and no changes to her circumstances; Ms D could comfortably live until aged 100 and not run out of money.

So, we recommended a suitable pension vehicle and assisted with the consolidation of her existing pensions. This was necessary because none of her existing policies gave the flexibility to take partial withdrawals from her pension. The new pension was cheaper and it tidied the existing policies up, so it is much easier to manage going forwards.
If you have multiple pensions you would like to consolidate or you are unsure what pension income you are going to receive, then get in touch. We are happy to have a no obligation initial meeting with you, at no cost, just to talk about your needs and your options.