Lifestyle

It’s Never Too Early for Later Life Planning

You might not like to think about it. But, one day you will die. When you eventually reach retirement age, your income will reduce, and you are more likely to suffer from ill health, which can further impact your financial health. You may also need to pay for your own care at a time where you just might not be able to afford it. So, in order to shield yourself (and your loved ones), you need to put some framework in place, and there are various things you can do to achieve this.

Pre-Paid Funeral Plans

The price of funerals have skyrocketed over the past 20 years. This, unfortunately, isn’t going to slow down either. However, a way of avoiding these rising costs is by opting in for a pre-paid funeral plan from one of your local funeral directors.

When you take out a pre-paid funeral plan, you pay for your funeral in monthly installments at today’s prices. This means that no matter how much funeral costs increase, you pay as if you were to die today.

But you don’t just pay for your funeral, you get to organize it too! Every aspect of your funeral, what flowers and music you want, what coffin you want to be buried in – you get to choose.

Writing a Will

Millions of people approaching retirement age choose not to write a Will simply because they don’t think it is important. This mindset is quite wrong. Why? Because if you die without having a Will in place, you do not get to decide what happens to your estate when you die.

However, when you write a Will, you put yourself in control. You get to appoint who will distribute your estate. This includes how your money is split, where your possessions go and who looks after your children if they are under 18 years old.

Lasting Powers of Attorney

As you get older, the chances of you losing mental capacity general increases. This means that one day, you may no longer be able to make decisions for yourself. But you can protect yourself against this by making a lasting power of attorney. This document allows you to appoint someone to make decisions for you if you no longer can. There are 2 different types of power of attorney, which cover finances and property and health and welfare.

Planning Your Retirement

As you approach retirement age, it is important to work out your finances. This means working out what income you will receive each month, whether that be from investments or from a state and/or private pension. Then you need to list out the items that you will need to buy each month, such as food and toiletries. If it looks like you won’t have enough money to cover these expenses, then you will need to find a way of reducing them or find an alternative source of money.

Equity ReleaseĀ 

One way of reducing your spending in retirement is through an equity release scheme. This is where you release a tax-free sum of money from the equity that has built up in your home. One of the largest items of expenditure will most probably be your mortgage repayments. But you can eliminate this by using tax-free cash to pay off your mortgage balance fully.

Round-Up

Just because you are growing older and approaching retirement age doesn’t mean your life needs to be dealt with financial hardship. Of course, as you get older, your finances will go down, but with careful planning, you can make your later life a lot more comfortable both for yourself and your loved ones too.

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