Thinking About Retirement?
Thinking About Retirement?
Hmmm has it finally arrived? Have you finally reached or passed that special birthday that earmarks the coming of a new age?
Retirement is supposed to be the finish line of the race against various struggles that we deal with during our lifetimes. Struggles such as the raising a family, a successful career or even running your own business can be difficult along with balancing your finances to ensure that you can provide for those who depended on you and still have enough money to ensure you can really enjoy your retirement.
What does it mean to win the retirement race? Normally it means that you can finally lay down the burdens of life. Your children have grown up and can handle their own challenges, your house is finally bought and paid for, there is enough money coming in from your retirement fund to allow you to pay bills and still have enough to spoil, just a little, your lovely grandchildren.
Providing life has been kind to you and you have not suffered major illness, or a disability, right now your primary concern is how best to fill all this time retirement has finally given you! Perhaps that lifetime dream of a relaxing holiday to some exotic place somewhere or the trip around the world you have always been promising yourselves! Whatever your pleasure retirement is what this is for!
But wait a minute. This all sounds great but in reality a far cry from the truth. Why are so many people having to delaying their retirement or dreading it if they have no choice in the matter? Have they not followed the cardinal rules of ensuring a good retirement? After all the rules of ensuring good retirement are simple!
1. Save Save Save! As early as you can you should start saving with your retirement plan in mind! Start small but always keep it up and set targets to meet.
2. Decide what it is you would like for your retirement. Sure it is impossible to predict how expensive things will be in the future but keep in mind the general rule experts follow is that you will need around 90 percent of your last earnings, if you are a low earner, (70 percent for higher earners) to maintain your standard of living.
3. Make informed decisions. Do not just blindly accept whatever private pension plans your employer has provided for your retirement will be enough. Investigate and find what you are covered for and how much you are covered for and take steps to take care of holes or insufficiencies.
4. Think of investment prospects! This also falls under the make informed decisions category really. Having money in the bank isn’t the best of investment strategies when it comes to retirement. Fluctuating currency values, inflation rates, interest rates and bank administrations will do wonders to diminish your retirement savings! Talk to a financial advisor about how best to protect your retirement money with safe investments and long term plans.
The reason they are worrying about their pensions and retirement plans is not because they don’t have a pension plan or a retirement strategy but because they can see their precious retirement pot they have so carefully amassed with sweat and blood is being steadily wiped out by so many factors.
Once retired you cannot add to your pot anymore leaving your retirement plans in tatters as inflation, bad currency performance, bad private pension management, expensive fees for managing your pension pots and the current recession are all eating away at your pensions mercilessly.
Gas, electricity and nearly all essential goods have seen their prices increase beyond inflation figures and with a fixed pot to depend upon for the rest of your life things do not look very good, so many people who have had to take a mortgage or a re-mortgage on their homes and are in clear danger of even losing their homes, retirement could truly be the age of nightmares indeed! But the greatest frustration is the apparent inability to do something about it.
Ironically expats with British Pensions do have an option. A very very good option!
The way out for expats to regain control of their retirement pot is through a government provision allowing expats, or anyone who has worked in the UK but no longer works or lives in the UK, to move their pensions into a Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme (QROPS).
What is the difference?
Because these pension schemes are established in other countries they follow different rules and regulations to UK based pension schemes.
Is this Safe?
Yes because HMRC will only allow your pension to move to an approved and regulated pension scheme provider.
What does this finally boil down to?
Some countries allow you to move the full amount of their pension pot from their QROPS scheme direct to their personal bank account!
Send your retirement pot in the right direction!
By getting full access to your retirement pot you can now have full control of what to do with your pension. You can choose to reinvest it into profitable investments or help alleviate crippling debts or just ensure that it does not get wasted away!
It is a shame that not everybody back home in UK can have such an option to get back control of their retirement pots. What is more of a shame is how QROPS has been kept very quiet by the government for so long, after all QROPS was established back in 2006 and yet it is only in the last 2 years that people have started becoming aware of how beneficial it is.
Those of us stuck home may not have much of an option to safeguard our retirement pots but at least those families and friends that are living abroad can find a way out!
