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It’s never too early to start planning for retirement

11th January 2012 Print

Retirement is a lifetime away and you’ve got a lot to do before you trot out to that pasture. Of course eventually you’ll need to take a look at your pension someday, but right now money’s a bit too tight to mention and you’re, frankly, a bit too busy to worry about it.

Maybe when you’ve got a better job you might start thinking about it seriously. Besides, you’ll probably get a windfall before then. Something will turn up, surely? Retirement plans are for the rich. They’re for fatalists, fixated on the end. Besides, the government will take care of it. You pay your national insurance so you’re already contributing toward your state pension. No sense worrying about it now. Everything will be fine. Tomorrow and tomorrow.

Only, maybe everything won’t be fine. Maybe we should in fact all be panicking a bit and running off to see about our pensions just as fast as we can. They wrote off some massive pension funds a few years back, people looking forward to a comfortable old age all of a sudden found that they had nothing.

Maybe they’ll abolish retirement, maybe the government won’t take care of anyone at all. The younger generation might pack us all off to sea, they might make pies out of anyone who can’t afford to pay their way. Maybe tomorrow will come and it will be too late. We’ll be desperately searching for a few quid to buy us out of pie town and we’ll think back to the golden summers of our youth and remember reading about how it’s never too early to start planning for retirement.

It is truly and certainly never too early to start planning for retirement and certainly not if you plan to enjoy those golden years.

Nobody knows what the future might hold but chance and fortune favor those who are well prepared. What we do know for sure is that money accumulates. Small financial moves and decisions made early on can make a huge difference over the years. The sooner you address retirement, the better.

It is a good idea to familiarise yourself with a state pension forecast. This will paint an accurate picture of how much state pension you may expect to get when you retire. The forecast allows you to work out what you might need and alerts you to instances where it is necessary to pay extra contributions in order to increase your entitlement.

You can find a state pension forecast online at sites such as Money Vista where you can also get access to a range of other useful planning and budgeting guides, tools and strategies.