Advice with retirement decision and drawdown strategy please!

handful

Bostonerimus1 said:

handful said:

jamesd said:

£60k puts you in the top ten percent so it's not so modest.

I'm always astounded by that statistic. I used to be on more in my last job which I hated and took a pay cut 5 years ago! Never regretted that decision for a second, it's not all about money!

For the comfortably off it's not necessarily about the money. If you are poor the money becomes more important.

Yes I get that and I wasn't being flippant, I've done many years in jobs that I hated including working 60- 70 hours a week on nights because I couldn't afford to tell them to stick it! As you get towards the sixties and beyond however, time and health becomes a more valuable commodity.

Bostonerimus1

handful said:

Bostonerimus1 said:

handful said:

jamesd said:

£60k puts you in the top ten percent so it's not so modest.

I'm always astounded by that statistic. I used to be on more in my last job which I hated and took a pay cut 5 years ago! Never regretted that decision for a second, it's not all about money!

For the comfortably off it's not necessarily about the money. If you are poor the money becomes more important.

Yes I get that and I wasn't being flippant, I've done many years in jobs that I hated including working 60- 70 hours a week on nights because I couldn't afford to tell them to stick it! As you get towards the sixties and beyond however, time and health becomes a more valuable commodity.

Aging does change your perspective and it's nice to be able to arrange your life around different priorities, but there are many people who just can't afford that and will have to keep working and earning as much as they can well beyond normal retirement age

Roger175

handful said:

tacpot12 said:

The sensible approach to the DB pension is to leave it until the NPA (especially if there is any Guaranteed Minium Pension associated with it), and draw on your savings and SIPPs until then. 

I'd suggest you repeat the Guiide process but include your wife's pensions and savings in as though they were your own. The tool doesn't need to know who the true owner is to make its recommendations.

Looking at your numbers, you can afford to retire if you are happy to use about half your savings to get you to your State Pension Age - this is a worst-case scenario, if the markets do well, you might not end up using half your savings, but it would be better to assume that you will.  You have a campervan and a partner that seems to want to spend more time with you, so I think you should be considering handing in your notice so you can leave in April.  

Looking closer at my Guiide plan, they seem to suggest using mainly savings first to the extent that they are completely depleted by 2031, just before the OH SP kicks in. That seems odd to me. Presumably in the meantime I should be transferring investments into cash inside the pension wrapper to replace the 2-3 years emergency fund? I believe Guiide will be offering a couples solution sometime soon so maybe re-run again then.

One thing that I realised running both of our finances together is that it won't be taking into account the OHs personal allowance so the true picture will be better than what I see today.

Whilst I think Guiide is a great resource, the fact that it only works for individuals is a real problem. I can only assume the 'couples' version is proving a bit more of a challenge than they originally envisaged, since they gave me the impression 2 years ago that this would be available shortly. Have you tried the trial edition of Voyant? This is a far more sophisticated tool and deals with couples as a matter of course. It is however a 1 month only offer (although that's per user/email!).

I have the same issue in terms of what gets shown drawn down first. In our case it shows cash, followed by SIPPs and finally ISAs. I have asked about this on here before and have concluded we need to be doing what suits us best - in our case, we would leave as much in SIPPs and spend the ISAs as we expect to leave a sizeable amount to our children and having a relatively high property value, our estate would be subject to IT.

handful

Roger175 said:

handful said:

tacpot12 said:

The sensible approach to the DB pension is to leave it until the NPA (especially if there is any Guaranteed Minium Pension associated with it), and draw on your savings and SIPPs until then. 

I'd suggest you repeat the Guiide process but include your wife's pensions and savings in as though they were your own. The tool doesn't need to know who the true owner is to make its recommendations.

Looking at your numbers, you can afford to retire if you are happy to use about half your savings to get you to your State Pension Age - this is a worst-case scenario, if the markets do well, you might not end up using half your savings, but it would be better to assume that you will.  You have a campervan and a partner that seems to want to spend more time with you, so I think you should be considering handing in your notice so you can leave in April.  

Looking closer at my Guiide plan, they seem to suggest using mainly savings first to the extent that they are completely depleted by 2031, just before the OH SP kicks in. That seems odd to me. Presumably in the meantime I should be transferring investments into cash inside the pension wrapper to replace the 2-3 years emergency fund? I believe Guiide will be offering a couples solution sometime soon so maybe re-run again then.

One thing that I realised running both of our finances together is that it won't be taking into account the OHs personal allowance so the true picture will be better than what I see today.

Whilst I think Guiide is a great resource, the fact that it only works for individuals is a real problem. I can only assume the 'couples' version is proving a bit more of a challenge than they originally envisaged, since they gave me the impression 2 years ago that this would be available shortly. Have you tried the trial edition of Voyant? This is a far more sophisticated tool and deals with couples as a matter of course. It is however a 1 month only offer (although that's per user/email!).

I have the same issue in terms of what gets shown drawn down first. In our case it shows cash, followed by SIPPs and finally ISAs. I have asked about this on here before and have concluded we need to be doing what suits us best - in our case, we would leave as much in SIPPs and spend the ISAs as we expect to leave a sizeable amount to our children and having a relatively high property value, our estate would be subject to IT.

Thanks for suggesting Voyant, is it fairly new user friendly? I agree it's a shame that couples aren't covered with Guiide. I don't think my strategy would be exactly what they suggest but it gives an interesting perspective. I will try Voyant over the weekend if I get time and see what that tells me!

handful

Bostonerimus1 said:

handful said:

Bostonerimus1 said:

handful said:

jamesd said:

£60k puts you in the top ten percent so it's not so modest.

I'm always astounded by that statistic. I used to be on more in my last job which I hated and took a pay cut 5 years ago! Never regretted that decision for a second, it's not all about money!

For the comfortably off it's not necessarily about the money. If you are poor the money becomes more important.

Yes I get that and I wasn't being flippant, I've done many years in jobs that I hated including working 60- 70 hours a week on nights because I couldn't afford to tell them to stick it! As you get towards the sixties and beyond however, time and health becomes a more valuable commodity.

Aging does change your perspective and it's nice to be able to arrange your life around different priorities, but there are many people who just can't afford that and will have to keep working and earning as much as they can well beyond normal retirement age

Yes I realise that and am aware I am one of the fortunate ones. If it hadn't been for an unexpected inheritance I would probably be one of them! Or at least not planning this for a few more years.

Roger175

handful said:

Thanks for suggesting Voyant, is it fairly new user friendly? I agree it's a shame that couples aren't covered with Guiide. I don't think my strategy would be exactly what they suggest but it gives an interesting perspective. I will try Voyant over the weekend if I get time and see what that tells me!

Voyant takes a bit of getting used to albeit, it is mostly intuitive, but basically under 'dashboard' you go down through the list and enter all the info about the people, their assets, pensions etc. You also have a timeline where you can set events (such as 'retirement' or 'new car purchase in 2 years time'). You generally need to set everything to current value, rather than future value, although the latter is helpful in some cases, for instance I have put next years Canada trip in as a future value, since we know the cost and Voyant otherwise increases this for inflation.

It does take a while, but stick with it as you can edit it time and time again, but once you get somewhere near it all starts making sense and it gives a great overview using the cashflow/details setting.

Roger175

I meant to add that once your base plan is set up, you can then copy it and create all sorts of stress test scenarios. 

Tplongy

What is Guiide please?  presumably a retirement forecasting tool?  I googled it but just keeps self correcting to Guide?

Tplongy

Ignore that,  I found it!

handful

Tplongy said:

Ignore that,  I found it!

It's a useful tool but sadly not for couples. Like suggested to me earlier in the thread, it is still useful to input the OH assets as your own but the drawdown calculations obviously won't take into consideration the second personal allowance so not as useful as it could be!.