Should I hold a cash reserve in retirement? If so, how much? Do you have a cash reserve as part of your retirement savings? Most people are familiar with the idea of having an “emergency fund” during one’s working years—a pot of money (typically, equal to three to six months of living expenses) that can help with unexpected bills or, perhaps most important, tide you over if you lose your job. Unemployment, of course, isn’t a risk for most retirees—but a prolonged bear market is. As such, many financial advisers recommend holding a cash reserve in later life as an insurance policy, a way to ..read more

Money Marketing The FCA has pledged to take further action over cash savings accounts after admitting attempts to improve switching have not worked. The regulator first conducted a market study into cash savings in 2015, which concluded that savings held with banks for a significant amount of time were paying lower interest rates than fresh accounts, there was a lack of transparency over the options available, and that there were significant barriers to switching between providers. Finding that the large current account providers had advantages over smaller providers, even though they offered ..read more

Top 20 UK Retirement blogs Assured Retirement has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 20 Retirement Blogs in the UK. Feedspot is an RSS reader – RSS stands for rich site summary or real simple syndication. RSS allows you to put all of your reading in one easy to access location, not your email inbox. To keep up with the latest retirement news, you don’t have to visit different websites every day to see what’s new. With RSS, you select your favourite sites and when they post something new, it will automatically feed into your reader. The post Assured Retirement awarded Top 20 UK Retir ..read more

MoneyMarketing.co.uk Savers withdrew £6.5bn using the pension freedoms in 2017 according to data from HM Revenue and Customs. This is nearly £1bn more compared to 2016 when £5.7bn was taken out of pension savings. On a quarterly basis, nearly 200,000 people took payments from their pension totalling £1.5bn in the fourth quarter of 2017 which is slightly lower than £1.59bn taken out during the third quarter of 2017. The total amount of money withdrawn since the pension freedoms started in April 2015 stands at £15.7bn. The data from HMRC covers “flexible payments” from pensions, which include f ..read more

Thisismoney.co.uk – Many pension savers take easy option of their provider’s funds in retirement – Firms offer to move them into their own funds but these can have big fees – Probe reveals choosing the wrong fund can leave the retired £13.5k worse off – Shopping around essential Savers who withdraw regular chunks of cash from their pensions risk £13,500 being gobbled up by expensive funds over their retirement. Money Mail today reveals how insurers are hitting loyal customers with hefty fees when they try to use the pension freedoms to dip into their pots. Six in ten people who use the ref ..read more

BBC.co.uk By Paul Lewis Presenter, Money Box On New Year’s Day 1909, more than half a million people aged 70 and more, who had worked all their lives, had passed a means test and were of good character queued up at their Post Offices for a State Pension of five shillings a week (25p) – around £20 in today’s money. The pension paid more than a century later is very different. Today nearly 13 million people – men over the age of 65 and women currently over the age of 64 – receive the state pension. A full one is around £160 a week (£8,300 a year) and one in seven pensioners – close on two mil ..read more

Dailymail.co.uk I pay into a pension at work and won’t retire for ages. Can I not think about it for a few years or is there something else I should be doing? What should I check on and how often? Richard Parkin, head of pensions policy at Fidelity International, replies: Firstly, it’s great news that you joined your workplace pension and have stayed in. Workplace pensions are almost always the right thing to do because of the employer contribution. Also, the earlier you start the better. In terms of what you should be thinking about, there are a few basic steps that will help you stay on t ..read more

Moneyfacts.co.uk Investment Life & Pensions Moneyfacts Awards 2017 Assured Retirement are delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted as a finalist in the 2017 Investment Life & Pensions Moneyfacts Awards. We have been shortlisted in the Best Third Way Product Provider category alongside much larger and longer established providers such as Aegon, Legal and General, LV= and MetLife. The Moneyfacts Awards are one of the highlights of the personal finance industry calendar. Rigorous product monitoring is carried out throughout the preceding year and the intermediary community is a ..read more

Telegraph.co.uk For those facing retirement with modest pension pots, the cost of getting help and advice can be prohibitive, leaving many stranded to make potentially life-changing financial decisions alone. Someone aged 65 can expect to live for 20 years, and the range of options available is constantly expanding. This presents a frightening challenge for many. Recent years have seen increased pension flexibility, in part from the launch of pension freedoms in 2015 that means there is no compulsion to buy an annuity and money can remain invested. This has been matched by growing complexity ..read more

Dailymail.co.uk For many of us, retirement conjures images of rest and relaxation, more time to travel and get things done around the house and in the garden. But a comfortable retirement requires an income, and it can be tricky to know how best to take your pension when you haven’t done it before. There are some common pitfalls that could trip you up on the way but, the good news is, avoiding them isn’t as hard as you might imagine. And there is always help on hand from Pension Wise, the Government’s free and impartial guidance service. Here are some of the top pension pitfalls and how to ..read more