How Do You Retire Richer?

How do you plan to spend your retirement? Taking holidays and exploring the world? Spending time with family? Treating your grandchildren? Whatever your retirement dreams are, you’ll need money to afford them as well as to continue to pay your regular household expenses.

With that in mind, we’ve put together three simple tips designed to help you retire richer and enjoy financial freedom.

Start as soon as you can

The earlier you start saving for retirement the better.

No matter how small the amount is, investing early means your money will be working harder for longer. Once you start putting money into your pension pot, you’ll begin taking advantage of compound interest, meaning you aren’t just making money on your investment, you’re also making money on the growth of your investment.

A great way to look at the power of investing early is to compare how much you might need to invest from different ages to reach the same goal. For example, starting with nothing and aiming to reach a goal of £500,000 by age 65:

• A 30-year-old would need to invest £440.10 each month*
• A 40-year-old would need to invest £839.61 each month
• A 50-year-old would need to invest £1,870.63 each month

In this example, the 50-year-old needs to invest more than 4 times the amount of the 30-year.

Don’t let saving be a choice

Make investing in your pension an automatic and essential part of your financial routine.

If you can adjust your mindset to view investing in your pension pot as an essential outgoing, like a mortgage payment or electricity bill, you’ll start moving towards your retirement goals a lot quicker.

If you haven’t already, why not organise a monthly direct debit to take a set amount from your account every month? Paying yourself automatically in this way can be a powerful way to reach your long-term goals. You can even increase the direct debit over time if more money becomes available or reduce it according to your budget.

Make the most of every opportunity

It’s important to take advantage of any help you can get when investing for retirement. The good news is there are numerous tax allowances that shrewd investors make the most of.

For example, the Pension Annual Allowance is the amount you can invest into your Pension and claim tax relief on. Each tax year you can typically claim tax relief on 100% your earnings up to £40,000. Over time, this government boost can seriously increase the value of your pension pot.

Another key tool available to you is an auto enrolment pension scheme. With contributions from you and your employer, as well as government tax relief, they’re an effective way of maximising every penny you add to your pension pot. Make sure you’re enrolled and contributing the amount you need to reach your pension goal.

Read our handy guide to the 2019/10 tax rates and allowances.

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*All calculations assume 5% annual growth after fees and don’t take into account inflation.