Here at Property4Pensions we have consistently tried to educate our prospective clients on the reality that in most cases individuals existing pensions will NEVER fulfil and facilitate a comfortable retirement – PERIOD!
The majority of the self employed and small business owners are simply “sleep walking” into poverty in most cases, if they are relying on their existing pension arrangements to provide a decent standard of living when they give up work!
Take the time to understand that if you have a pension pot (i.e. Personal Pension) it ultimately has to come down to how big your pot is on retirement. The income that you derive from your pot is directly connected to the interest rate/annuity position at that time.
£50,000 pot x 5% (interest/annuity for example only) = £2,500 p.a. (before tax)
The title of this post is defined ambition the last waltz for final salary, we love this article as it highlights brilliantly that change is coming! Are you prepared?
Whilst we specialise in helping the small business owners and self employed who generally have had to rely on building up their own retirement ‘pots”. The lucky ones historically have had final salary arrangements, where the end retirement income was a result of how long there were a member of the scheme as the Employers ensured there was sufficient funds to give their employees a decent income on retirement. This so called “promise” was part and part of your employment contract, part of the benefits package and was not solely dependent on what monies the employee paid, as the employer took on that responsibility.
So even with limited knowledge, hopefully you can see that this liability to pay these benefits have become impossible to maintain hence why most schemes have either closed, winding down or elements have changed, i.e. later retirement ages, less benefits, increased contributions etc..
We have seen the papers full of proposed strikes as the Government or Employers have seek to amend their original pension offers to existing members and understandably these members voice their outrage on the proposed damage to their retirement aspirations.
We believe that only relying on your pension arrangement is fool hardy to say the least and that is why we champion the possibilities that Property can offer and we are here to help.
Having read this article, hopefully you can appreciate that change is inevitable as well as he passage of time!
It appears that all these attempts to change things only add to the lack of clarity and confusion and the only person who ultimately suffers if you.
If you are going to rely on anyone for a comfortable retirement, then rely on yourself. You must establish exactly where you stand today and where you want to be in the future and make a plan.
http://www.international-adviser.com/tax—technical/is-defined-ambition-the-last-waltz-for-final