Yet another retirement plan

Bobziz

Hi Folks, Hoping for any pointers/views on the following 20+ year plan.

Context:

Age 55, plan to retire in 5 years. Cautious investor. All income requirements covered by DB & SP pensions from age 76.

Currently have £450k in SIPP/AVC/ISA/Savings

Stage 1 - Age 55-67: Accumulation of growth portfolio (VWRP or similar)

Stage 2 - Age 60-67: 60% income needs funded by DB pension, 40% funded with 3 years cash and 4 years gilts via tax free AVC.

Stage 3 - Age 68-75: 80% funded via DB & SP pensions, 20% funded via draw-down from growth portfolio, either selling units from VWRP or switching to VHYL and taking natural yield. The 20% is discretionary spend only, so could be adjusted. 12 years of growth @ 6% nominal would result in a nominal draw-down of ~3%.

Stage 4 - Age 76 on: All income needs met by DB & SP pensions. Remaining growth portfolio left untouched to provide a legacy for the kids of up to the IHT threshold at the time. As wife is 7 years younger, the pot she inherits may well remain invested and untouched for >20 years.

DB pensions are index linked and uncapped. The AVC will also be used to pay off the mortgage, fund university x 2 and provide an emergency fund.

I've looked at the scenario of me going early, and my wife would be sufficiently covered by DB survivor pension and life assurance etc.

Does this plan seem realistic and efficient, with an appropriate amount of risk ? Conscious I should really covert all my sums to real.

Many thanks, Bob

El_Torro

Based on the information you've provided it's not exactly easy to cross check your figures. However since a big chunk of your income is going to be covered by state pension and DB pensions your plan seems reasonable enough, not too risky. Your DC pension also seems more than big enough to last you until you're 75.

If anything I'd say you can probably retire before you're 60, hard to be too definitive about that statement though.

barnstar2077

Hard to say without knowing what you want to have to live on each year, and how much the DB is going to be etc. What provisions does your wife have of her own? You could possibly both retire early and have more time together.

Bobziz

Thanks both, some more numbers which may help:

Of the £450k pot, ~£250k would go into the growth pot with the remaining £200k covering the first 7 year gap, mortgage, uni and emergency fund. so £250k hopefully growing for 12 years to provide ~ £110k of income across 8 years, before continuing to grow for another ~20 years after that.

I'm conscious that unless something goes very wrong in the world, the pot will meet our income needs without much strain. I guess I'm interested in whether the way I've gone about doing so is sensible, i.e. using £200k of the pot to bridge the first gap etc and then drawing down on the pot to fill the second gap. Does this strike the right balance between dealing with the SORR and building a decent legacy ?

Marcon

I'm all for people not over-sharing, but it's quite simply unrealistic to expect people to comment helpfully and accurately without any of the essential fine detail. Percentages of unknown numbers aren't a basis for informed replies. Maybe get some proper (paid for) financial advice, and you can then be confident that the person advising has a full picture of your situation?