Thursday 20 October 2016

Testing Your Retirement Budget

If you've always enjoyed spending right up to the limits of your income (or even exceeding them) whilst you've been working, how will things need to change for you when you retire?

Most people have to have some sort of budget in place once they retire - after all, there aren't many people who would tell you that they have more than enough money from their retirement income, that they'll never have to worry about their cashflow ever again.

If you're worried about your ability to cope on your retirement income, give it a trial run for six months now to see how you get on. This is easy enough to do:

1. Find out what your projected retirement income will be.

2. You're going to need two bank accounts. The first is your current account which you're going to use as your 'pension account', i.e., the account in which you keep your projected retirement income and the money which you'll live on for the next 6 months. The second account will be a deposit account and you'll 'sweep' the difference between your net salary and your pension into this.

So, for example, if you were expecting a total monthly retirement income of £1000 and you receive a salary of £2000, on pay day, you sweep the excess £1000 from your current account into your deposit account, leaving yourself £1000 to live on for the next month.

3. After you've done this for 3 months, you'll be able to tell if you're going to be able to cope on your projected retirement income or not. If it becomes obvious that you're going to struggle, you have time to do something about that situation now. Maybe you need to have a word with your employer and arrange to continue working a little longer to accrue more pension savings. Or maybe you could get a part-time job somewhere else. Or start a retirement business.  If you like the idea of a retirement business, click here to check out our 'Boomers Starting Businesses' blog for some ideas and tips.

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