Where to get advice re-funding forced early retirement?

jamesd

BoudiccaUK wrote: »

Is there any advantage to doing this rather than making a personal payment into my husband's pension pot?

Depends on the tax rates of the two of you when paying in (the amount of tax relief) and when withdrawing. If he has a higher tax rate than you now, paying in for him and giving you some of the 25% tax free lump sum is one approach that can maximise the benefits. But you should plan to use your whole personal allowance in retirement so some income beyond the state pension is useful.

BoudiccaUK wrote: »

What I really want to know is if retirement or semi retirement was forced on us tomorrow (ie contracts dry up) what can we do with what we already have to live as well as possible. Who can advise us on this?

Me and others who've done the financial independence planning and early retirement planning things would be some candidates. See Drawdown: safe withdrawal rates and use cfiresim. Once the minimum income that projects goes above the minimum income you need, you're safe. When it goes over the target income you can retire with reasonable confidence that you'll have that, while not dropping below the minimum. You can raise the minimum once you get into desirable income rather than minimum income planing, the stage after just barely making it to the targets. A higher minimum reduces the starting income level so it's not a free exchange.

Once you understand the way that sort of planning works you're in a much better place to know if you need advice and what it needs to be about.

It took me around ten years of highly committed saving and investing at more than 60% of income level to get through my minimum income level and then on to my minimum retirement level. Which means I don't need to worry much about losing my job any more. It's now all about raising my income to achieve optional new objectives, like being able to retire in other parts of the world.

The focus of all of that is "for the rest of your life" planning. If you need cover for a year or five years the amount of money you need to accumulate is much lower. Reducing expense, or making more of them discretionary ones that you really will drop, helps a lot by lowering the income need. Big house has high running cost, flat in low cost area has low running costs. So one plan might be to sell the house and move to the flat. Similar trade-offs can be made in transportation and food.