Pension pot falling again

Callum_J

Thanks for all the input.
I’m 61, and won’t be retiring anytime soon. So I am in for the long haul, and I know investments can go down as well as up. I won’t be withdrawing any money from my pension funds, and will just leave everything as it is, apart from increasing my pension contributions a little bit as I can afford.
I’m not very knowledgeable about investments and investing, and the Vanguard Life Strategy funds were recommended to me by my financial advisor. He said they were a good option, and were ones he used himself, personally.

bostonerimus

The VLS series of funds is just fine for you and given you are relatively close to retirement age then there is an argument for a fairly high allocation to less volatile investments - which usually means bonds. 

older_and_no_wiser

Callum_J said:

Thanks for all the input.
I’m 61, and won’t be retiring anytime soon. So I am in for the long haul, and I know investments can go down as well as up. I won’t be withdrawing any money from my pension funds, and will just leave everything as it is, apart from increasing my pension contributions a little bit as I can afford.
I’m not very knowledgeable about investments and investing, and the Vanguard Life Strategy funds were recommended to me by my financial advisor. He said they were a good option, and were ones he used himself, personally.

Unless you plan on transferring your pension into an annuity on retirement, then you will be investing until you die. So even less reason to panic. My philosophy is to keep a couple of years of living expenses in cash/savings and keep it topped up when markets are doing OK. So hard to time it though, but as long as you have that cash buffer, there's no reason to panic even in retirement. I believe it's called "laddering" and means that you don't need to de-risk by this lifestyling approach when you approach retirement. Why ramp down your possible future return percentage just because in 4/3/2/1 years time you will need to withdraw 3-4% of the portfolio?