Despite Auto Enrolment and the associated widespread media coverage on the importance of providing an adequate future pension pot, as many as 38% of people have no plans to make investments to fund their retirement. This shocking statistic has been highlighted in recent research prepared by YouGov – it illustrates only too clearly how poorly prepared many of us are for retirement.
Whether it is due to money being short because of the increasing cost of living, or a complete lack of confidence in pension schemes, people are apparently not getting ready for meeting their needs when they stop working.
In the past, most employees were protected by Defined Benefit and, to a lesser extent, by Defined Contribution, pension plans which enabled them to ignore the separate requirement to invest in equities and bonds because their future pension was effectively secured through regular pension contributions, mostly by their employer. As a consequence of poor investment returns and increased regulation, the vast majority of such Company pension schemes have now been withdrawn.
In the modern world, people give a higher priority to owning a house before providing for a pension. With improving sentiment in the housing market, it is most likely that homeowners will continue to believe that their home is likely to be the best source of retirement funds in the future.
As revealed in the recently published market growth figures from the Equity Release Council, more of those at or in retirement are taking advantage of Equity Release schemes as a safe and secure method of supplementing their state and, usually very modest, private pensions. This trend is likely to strengthen as the post war baby boomer generation reaches retirement age.
To learn more about how Equity Release can be used to top up your pension income, it makes sense to approach a specialist advisory firm offering independent advice from the whole market. Firms like Bower have already helped hundreds of people to improve their retirement lifestyle by making use of flexible Lifetime Mortgages and Home Reversion Plans.
