Planning your retirement age

By Sara Ferguson

The first decide when youre going to retire. If youre in your 20s you may feel this is ridiculous: How on earth can you possibly predict how you will feel about working in 40 years or so? Or it may be one of the easiest questions in the world to answer if you have long had no intention of working past the age of 50. Whichever type of person you are, thinking about the age you plan to give up work is critical because it has an impact on your retirement planning " how much you need to save and where you need to invest it.

Were all living a lot longer. Life expectancy has shot up in the past of decades. If youre a woman born in 1990 you can expect to live until your early nineties. Government buffoons reckon that the news on life expectancy is going to get better, with the average woman born today expected to live until they are nearly 110 years old!

This means if you retire in your mid 60s and enjoy just average health youre going to need enough money to live on for at least 30 to 40 years. Retiring at 50 or indeed anytime before the official state retirement age of 65 for men and 60 for women (until 2020, when it becomes 65 for both) is an impossible dream for the majority. Realistically, youll probably have to work until your seventies because you simply cant save enough to retire before then. Retiring at 50 requires a huge pension pot, supplemented with additional investments. If you are in a well-paid job and start saving a significant percentage of your salary from your early twenties, it might just be possible.

Otherwise, it wont be. Doing the math could make you appreciate that your dream is unrealistic. Either you invest more money to make it possible or get used to the fact that youll have to stay in the rat race for much longer. - 23208

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