How planning today can help you retire your way
Whether you’re just starting out or retirement is getting closer, having a plan in place can give you more freedom and flexibility for the future. Not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered.
Assess your current situation
For many people, pension savings build up gradually across different stages of life, through your workplace, previous jobs, or personal contributions.
It’s not unusual to feel unsure about how much you’ve saved or where everything is held, so as a first step, you should check the current state of your pension. This may include your State Pension, your current workplace pension, and any older pots you’ve built up along the way.
When you can see what you have, it becomes much easier to start thinking about what you might need, and the actions you need to take.
If you’re with Smart Pension, sign in to your account and track your savings and use our pension calculator to get a sense of your future retirement income. You can also use our life expectancy calculator, and retirement needs calculator to understand how long your savings might need to last.
Bring your pensions into one place
If you’ve changed jobs several times, you’ll have multiple pension pots, but bringing all of these together into one place can make retirement planning much easier.
Having a single view of your savings means you can see everything in one place, making it easier to understand how much you’ve currently saved and how your pension is performing overall.
It can also reduce the need to manage multiple accounts and help you stay more engaged with your savings over time.
With Smart Pension, you can track, trace and transfer your pensions into one account, giving you a clear, concise view of your retirement savings.
Take small, impactful steps
Once you have a clear picture of all your savings, planning becomes less about the big decisions but more about small, manageable actions.
Increasing your contributions, topping up your pension when you can, or reviewing how your savings are invested can all help shape your future. And thanks to tax relief and long-term investment growth, these steps can have a compounding effect, helping your savings grow steadily over time.
Taking action when you can, and reviewing things from time to time, can help keep you on track without needing to make constant changes.
Look ahead to retirement
As you start to think about retiring, it’s important you know the different retirement options available to you. After all, retirement is often more flexible than people expect.
From age 55 (rising to 57), you may be able to take part of your pension as a tax-free lump sum, set up a regular retirement income, or keep your savings invested and access them gradually.
Many people choose to take their pension in stages, rather than all at once. This can help your savings last longer, but if you want to find out more about how this works, or the different options available, just watch our videos.
Final thought
It’s never too late to start making a difference to your future.
Planning for retirement doesn’t have to feel complicated or daunting. It can be as simple as understanding where you are now and taking some time to look ahead.
Whether you’re just beginning to track your pensions or starting to think about how you’ll use your savings, each step can help you move forward with more confidence.
With Smart Pension, you can manage your savings, bring everything together, and take your retirement your way, with the flexibility to move from saving to spending all from the same account.
Want more help with retirement planning? Check out our useful tools.
Good to know
This information is for guidance purposes only and is not financial advice. If you need financial advice you can locate a regulated financial adviser on the MoneyHelper website. Where we provide links to third-party websites we are not responsible for their content, so it's important for you to carry out your own independent research.
