After years of hard work, retirement is an exciting period in life. You might be looking forward to taking a trip to sunnier climes, dedicating more time to a favourite hobby or spending more time with family and friends. However, to ensure that you are able to continue to pay the bills and live comfortably when you are no longer drawing an income, you need to start putting money aside as soon as possible. The thought of it may be daunting, and it can feel like an impossible mission.
The process of building a retirement pot typically involves a combination of consistent saving and long-term investments, but saving and investing for your retirement can look pretty different during your twenties versus your forties.
With discipline and determination, you can be on your way to a comfortable life after years of hard work. Building a retirement savings pot requires more certainty in your financial planning and less risk-taking (depending on factors such as age and your attitude to risk). But first, you need to figure out how much you need in order to set a goal.
Here are some retirement planning tips to boost your savings – no matter what your current stage of life – to enable you to pursue the retirement you deserve.
How you can boost your retirement savings
1. Retirement goals
Setting up a retirement goal requires you to find out how much income you need when you have stopped working. To get an indication of this, use the following questions to help you:
- At what age do I plan to retire?
- How many years do I have to plan for whilst I’m in retirement?
- What is my desired monthly income during retirement?
2. Risk appetite for investments
Are you a ‘conservative’ investor who cannot afford to lose the initial capital you put up? Can you sacrifice the certainty of having your principal protected in order to gain higher potential earnings?
If you do not already have a large sum of retirement savings, you shouldn’t take too much risk when you invest, since you may not have the luxury of time to recoup any investment losses as you approach your target retirement age.
3. Time horizon
If appropriate, generally a bigger portion of your retirement pot can be apportioned for higher-risk investments if you start early in your career. As you progress closer towards the retirement years, it’s usually prudent for your pension pot to focus increasingly on lower-risk investments or savings with the objective of providing more stable returns.
It’s important to consider allocating your investments into products suitable for different investment horizons (short, medium and longer term) depending on your risk appetite. For example, a short-term investment could include some riskier assets such as single equities or investing in a fast-growing speciality fund. You should always be reminded that with higher expected returns come higher risks.
4. Inflation
If you choose to save your way to retirement by putting cash into a savings account, the value of your money could potentially be eroded due to inflation. Therefore, in order to ensure that the money you have now preserves its purchasing power during your retirement years, you need to choose savings or investments that have the potential to provide you with higher returns.
5. Diversification
While putting all your retirement savings into a bank account can be potentially risky, so too can investing all of your savings in shares. The key to growing your retirement fund will typically include having different asset classes in your portfolio, which is otherwise known as ‘diversification’. Diversification not only helps you manage the risk of your investments, but it also involves re-balancing your portfolio to maintain the risk levels over time.
6. Affordability
Building a retirement pot is a long process. By starting late, you may find that you need to set aside a larger amount for your retirement. This could reduce your current disposable income and may cause you to reduce your current quality of life.
Therefore, you’d want your retirement sum to be an affordable amount for your current lifestyle. We can work with you to help you take a look at your current commitments to make saving for your retirement a sustainable habit.
How much money do you need to retire?
It’s never too early to start planning for your retirement! With discipline determination, and a good retirement savings plan you can be on your way to a comfortable life after years of hard work. To find out more or to discuss your situation, please book your free introductory consultation.
Content correct at time of writing and is intended for general information only and should not be construed as advice