Retirement planning for the life you want after work

Most people know the date they'd like to stop. Very few know whether they can.

The pension statements arrive once a year and say nothing useful. There's one from a job you left in 2009 that you've stopped opening. You've done the sums in your head and got a different answer each time.

Retirement planning is the work of turning that into a number you can trust, and then a plan that gets you to it.

The gap nobody talks about

DWP figures for the year ending 2025 put the average pensioner income at around £455 a week.

Loughborough University puts the cost of a comfortable retirement, one with holidays, a car, meals out, help for the family, at around £870 a week for a single person.

That's the distance most people are trying to cross without a map. And the ones who close it aren't the ones who earned the most. They're the ones who found out early enough to do something about it.

What we work out with you

When you can stop. Not the state pension age. Yours. The date the numbers support, which is often earlier than people assume and occasionally later than they hoped.

What it costs. The life you're picturing, priced. Two holidays or four. The car replaced every five years or every ten. What you want to give the children, and when.

Where the money comes from. Pensions, ISAs, property, the business. In what order, and in what way, so you keep as much of it as the rules allow.

What happens if it goes wrong. Markets fall. Care is needed. One of you goes first. A plan that only works when everything goes to plan isn't a plan.

Finding what you've lost

Most people we see have pensions they've lost sight ofMost people we see have pensions they've forgotten about. Three jobs ago, a scheme that's changed name twice since, a small pot somebody has been charging fees on for fifteen years.

We help you work out what you've got and find the paperwork, then tell you whether each one is worth moving. We track them down, work out what each is worth, and tell you whether it's worth moving. Sometimes it isn't. Old schemes occasionally carry guarantees no modern pension would offer, and moving transferring out would cost you more than it gained. 

So the honest advice is to leave it where it is. We say so even though we earn nothing by it.That's a recommendation nobody makes if their income depends on the transfer.

Then the harder question

Money isn't the difficult part of retirement. It's the part with numbers on it.

The difficult part is that you're about to stop doing the thing you've done every weekday for forty years. People plan the finances and forget to plan the Tuesdays.

The clients who do this well have worked out what they're retiring to, not just what they're retiring from. We ask about that, because a plan built around a life you actually want is one you'll stick to.

These are decisions with downsides as well as benefits. Drawing an income from invested money means it can rise and fall, and we'll make sure you understand both sides before you commit to anything.