Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)

Wealth window is shutting fast

Plan carefully so you don’t outlive your money

A better tomorrow depends on saving today. How much is enough for you to retire? What’s your number?

None of us is getting any younger and time flies faster as we age, so it’s important to plan ahead for retirement, a period of our life that could last 40 years.

My wife gets frustrated with me when I spend more time planning our retirement than I do our summer holiday, but it’s a no-brainer… isn’t it?!

We all have what I call a wealth window, a limited period of time to create the wealth to see us through our retirement. As this window gets smaller, it’s harder to climb through. If you have 10 years to go before you plan to retire, you have 120 more paydays to secure your retirement.

Is that enough?

There are two types of people: those who outlive their money and those who don’t. Everyone wants to be in the latter group, but as you approach retirement it may be too late to do much about it.

There’s no escaping that you must save, and you must save today, if you want your future to be brighter than your past. Time and the ability to invest regularly are your best assets to secure your retirement.

When we save for retirement, we’re putting aside money for our future self, the person we will become. To do this, we’re balancing our needs and wants – and after more than 29 years in financial planning, I can tell you that no matter how much you earn, you’ll always be balancing them.

Most people don’t get excited about saving each month because, just like a growing oak tree, you don’t see the

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You must save today, if you want the future to be brighter than your past

outcome for years to come, and we’re all too impatient to wait years.

This is why so few of us are able to secure the retirement we wanted – even though we all like the beautiful oak tree.

How much is enough?

Knowing how much you need to have saved for your retirement has always been difficult to calculate; we don’t know how long you’ll live, what inflation will be, and so on.

That’s why in The Money Plan, I share the rule of 300: if you want an income of £1,000 per month in retirement, you’ll need a pension pot of around £300,000 to achieve it. This is a great “finger in the air” estimate, but it’s not perfect.

For those who want to take it a step further and create a plan for retirement, there’s an excellent, free cashflow planning tool on my website WarrenShut­e.com. After entering a few details, it calculates how much you will need to save each month in order to never run out of money through your retirement years.

Whether you have 36 or 360 paydays left until you stop working, thinking about the future now will help you make the decisions you need to achieve the retirement you want.

For more money planning ideas visit WarrenShut­e.com.