Best Retirement Planning Advisor in Leicester

Retirement planning should be a big part of your life; if you haven’t already started, it’s probably no too late, but you need to make sure that you have a good plan to see you through your twilight years. To make the most of your retirement, you need to plan and that is best done with a qualified financial advisor.

Finding someone who can walk you through this fairly complex process is key to getting the most out of it, and that is your starting point. Usually, the best way to select a financial advisor is to carry out an internet search, by typing "financial advisors near me" or including the name of your town or city, like "retirement planning Leicester" to amass a good selection of businesses that can help you. However, this is definitely one to ask around about amongst friends and family as there is a huge chance that someone else in your circle of people will have done the same thing before you, so ask them.

Once you have found a good financial advisor, you need to sit down with them and do some background work. The first thing that your advisor is likely to do is to check your State pension projection from the Government website. The next step is to look at any defined pensions (Defined Benefit – DB) that you may have with your current or former employers. This is usually calculated as:

• Years in scheme
• Divided by accrual rate
• Multiplied by pensionable earnings

This will give you a figure to indicate what you are likely to earn from the scheme once you retire. For example,

For example, if your particular scheme has an accrual rate of 1/60th and you were in a defined benefit pension scheme for 10 years, and you retire at 65 on a salary of £24,000 a year, it would give you a pension of:

• Time 10 years multiplied by £24,000
• Divided by accrual rate of 60,
• Would give you £4,000 a year.

However, this would be less if you take any tax-free cash lump sum.

Because many of use change jobs fairly often, you may have some old and forgotten company pensions that may still yield a small return so it is worth doing. There is a Government website that can help you track down the contact details for pension holders in UK companies, so this is worth checking and contacting the appropriate people.

Once you have found all of your pensions and have determined how much you are likely to be able to live on once you retire, you can also look at your potential spend on essentials and determine a final figure. At this point, you will be able to understand the kind of lifestyle that you can afford, and whether you need to apply any kind of top up to your pension fund.

This is also the time that your financial advisor really comes into their own and can offer you advice on how to boost your potential pot. While there are a number of options, the two most favored are to pay more into your pension, or to defer the start date – push back your retirement date.These options allow you to increase the financial amount you’ll have to retire on and/or decrease the amount required due to having a shorter overall retirement.

Your financial advisor will also tell you to clear all your debts before your intended retiring age so that you don’t have to continue to pay them once you have left employment. They will probably also tell you not to take on any new financial burdens in the years running up to retiring, for the same reason. It you can clear your mortgage, together with credit card and loan debt, then you will be in a much better financial position when you retire, and not have to worry about finding money.

If you want to discuss your retirement planning and financial options, come and chat to use at McCarthy Hill family office, and see how we can help you.