Published on: 15th February 2021

Planning for retirement

It is never too early to start planning for retirement, but as you get closer and closer to retirement age, there are key fundamentals to make sure that you have in place. These are not just from an Estate Planning perspective, but making sure your affairs are all in order as you move towards retirement is important.

So, what do you need to consider when planning for retirement? Here are some key areas:

LPA Documents

It is our firm belief that anyone who has assets should have a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) documents. However, this becomes even more crucial as you move towards retirement age. Anyone who does not have LPA documents in place, is risking a potentially very difficult situation as has been highlighted recently by Good Morning Britain presenter Kate Garraway.

You can find out more about Lasting Power of Attorney documents here.

Planning for care fees assessment

As you move towards retirement, a key area of Estate Planning to ensure you have covered is to do with appropriate care fees planning. By being proactive in your Estate Planning, we can help mitigate the risk of your house being assessable for care fees by the local authority.

When it comes to care fees planning and retirement, all the time one spouse is still living in the house, that house cannot be assessable for care fees. We would always recommend that a trust is in place so that when one spouse passes away, their share of the property goes into trust. This protects the capital of the deceased from care fees assessment if the survivor were to go into long term residential care.

You can read more about appropriate care fees planning here.

Looking at your finances

Your earning power when you retire is quite clearly going to be different so looking at your finances as you plan for retirement is extremely important. Here are some key financial steps to take when planning for retirement:

Think about how much money you will need for retirement and make sure you do some planning with your financial adviser.
Ensure you undertake a pension fund review and see where else you may be able to generate income from should you need it.
From an Estate Planning perspective, when reviewing your finances for retirement it is a good idea consider how you can pass wealth on to your families to minimise Inheritance Tax. If you live with your partner, you can find more Inheritance Tax advice here.

Reviewing your Will

Here at Casey & Associates we offer a free, no obligation three yearly review to all our Clients, but as you head towards retirement, reviewing your Will becomes even more important. If you have not reviewed your Will for a number of years, then we would strongly recommend you do so as there is a good chance your circumstances will have changed. Whether you have more grandchildren than when you last reviewed your Will, have had a divorce or re-married, you need to make sure that any changes in your circumstances are updated in your Will or you risk your assets not being distributed as you wish.

Preparing emotionally

Aside from Estate Planning, it is important to make sure you emotionally prepare for retirement. Especially for career focussed professional whose lives very much revolve around their work, it is crucial to make sure that you are ready for the emotional impact retirement can have. In this article from Age UK, a plan and structure is suggested which centres around finding new hobbies, seeing retirement as a positive change, and making sure that you build a social circle around you.

If you are heading towards retirement age and starting to think about your Estate Planning in relation to retirement, then do get in touch with our friendly and helpful team who will be able to review what you have in place and offer advice on any changes that would be beneficial for retirement.

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Our Covid-19 policy is now that if you wish to give instructions or require general information about our Wills, Lasting Powers of Attorney or Trusts then we will carry out a telephone or Zoom appointment. However, if you wish to give instructions to one of our Consultants and you feel that you can only do this at a Face to Face meeting we are offering, at our Consultant’s discretion, a limited number of Face to Face appointments in most of the areas we normally cover (subject to Government advice). To see the areas we normally cover please click here. To arrange an appointment please telephone 01732 868190 or click here.