Retirement shorts

In this blog:

1. The data doesn’t lie - from the DWP Horse’s Mouth

2. The worked example: the lifetime treasury ledger on tax & pensions

3. £850k - leave it for IHT or draw it down for gifts out of income?

4. Why "Normal Expenditure Out of Income" Beats Every Other Route

In this blog:

1. The National Insurance gap check: £956.80 and the 37.4% guaranteed return

2. Three buckets: how to stop one bad year becoming a bad retirement

3. Changes: from command and control to portfolio life

4. Reader tool: the NI year cost-benefit worksheet

If you’ve been following the news about the State Pension, you’ve probably heard plenty about the “triple lock”.

It sounds reassuring. But what does it actually protect? Why does it cost so much? And what would changing it mean for the income you receive in retirement?

In this blog:

1. The PCLS Conundrum: Don't Let "Tax-Free" Blind Your Maths

2. Bengen Was in California: Why the "4% Rule" Needs Guardrails in Britain

3. "Welcome to the Machine": Structuring the Blank Slate

4. Reader Tool: The Phased PCLS Decision Matrix

In this blog:

1. “I've saved all my life, so why does spending it feel so wrong?”

2. “Nobody warned me about the first Monday.”

3. “The Bank of Mum and Dad is open - but should it be?”

4. “If I go first, will they cope?”

In this blog:

1. Heads I win, tails you lose

2. The $20 million cat

3. Correct, or understood?

4. What would perfect look like?

5. The unbucket list

In this blog:

1. A gilt ladder today for £500,000

2. The annuity nobody wants to buy

In this blog:

1. The up-to-date annuity rates.

2. Our brand new fees explanation for clients.

3. How share valuations are plucked from thin air.

4. Wealth management = financial planning plus investment management.

5. Japan – what the carry trade is, why it could sink Trump.

6. The real £sd cost of adding ‘guaranteed’ to your pension? It’s here.

In this blog:

1. ‘Mister, I don’t sell to fish’ - who the product is really designed for

2. You think. AI does not. What it got wrong about my own State Pension

3. There went $2.3 trillion dollars, and here most of it comes back

4. A worked example: Alan, Barbara and a 25 % fall

5. Why the money pages never say "nothing to see here"

6. On age, boredom, and brothers who fall out – the Miliband Mess

In this blog:

1. The best question in investing, asked two years too late

2. So where are we now?

3. What this has to do with your income

4. So, what were you thinking of?

5. What the pension is actually for

6. The awkward question this raises

7. So, what is the money actually for?

In this blog:

1. The chauffeur who gave the lecture

2. “You are never too old to make a good deal”

3. Twelve miles a day at ninety-one.

In this blog

1. Winning the Loser's Game - Charles Ellis

2. The Psychology of Money - Morgan Housel

3. Retirement Planning Guidebook - Wade Pfau

4. How Not to Invest - Barry Ritholtz

5. Pensionize Your Nest Egg - Moshe Milevsky and Alexandra MacQueen

In this blog:

1. Don’t assume the wealth of others

2. Retiring too early, and the boredom nobody warns you about

3. The man who sold at the bottom

4. On having enough

5. Twenty holes in the punch card

6. Do not buy the dip, and do not dump either

7. Probability is not the same as statistics

8. A Beggars Banquet of consequences

In this blog:

1. Commitment.

2. Every day’s a school day – the tokamak, and why it’s important.

3. “We can't change the year we're retiring: we need income irrespective of market values.”

In this blog:

1. Owning a business, not trading a screen

2. The cost of living, and the price of a ski pass

3. “You don’t make that kind of money selling bibles.”

4. You are not the average

5. Remember Sid, and remember mean reversion

In this blog:

1. Why the 4% retirement rule fails in the UK - a 55-year reality check

2. Private credit funds bolt the doors - what it means and why it matters

3. How dividends grow your money - yield on cost and the Rule of 72

In this blog:

1. How clients actually work with us - the whole journey, start to finish

2. The three ingredients of investing: timescale, costs and returns

3. What we do, week in and week out, that you never see

4. A note from a Hollywood hotel, and the only ingredient that really counts

In this blog:

1. The mismatch

2. What dies with you, what does not

3. The size of the gap

4. The three ways to replicate it

5. The arithmetic, in full - index-linking, a 26-year worked example to the last penny

In this blog:

1. Money market funds - not a bank account, and the difference matters

2. The wealth you did not spend - and two events worth your diary

3. Patience, Amazon, and the difference between $100 and $6

4. What is the State Pension actually worth

5. Annuities: the real rates, side by side

6. “Gee up, Neddy!” - is retirement the time to buy a horse?

In this blog:

1. What an LPA actually is - and why there are two of them

2. The numbers the retirement industry does not like to mention

3. The Court of Protection: what happens without an LPA, and what it costs

4. A worked example - meet Robert and Jean

5. Five things to do this weekend

6. Will AI make me rich?

In this blog:

1. The 10 Minute Retirement Plan

2. The Retirement Funded Ratio - your most useful number

3. The attractions of life in the slow lane

4. Say "yes" more - and where it will take you

5. Old money in the UK - how it persists

In this blog:

1. Pension Basics - what your pension actually is

2. Hotel California: what’s changing on 6 April 2027

3. £280,000: a worked example, in pounds and pence

4. Four conversations to have - now, not in 2027

In this blog:

1. I Will Survive - the longevity problem nobody told you about

2. Sequence risk: the quiet assassin of pension pots (with the maths)

3. Annuity rates on 15 April 2026 - and what a difference a year makes

4. The Dividend Heroes: trusts that have been paying through every crisis since your grandparents were courting

5. The conversation: what you haven’t told your spouse about the money

In this blog:

1. That’s who I want to be.

2. Total return, capital and income: the data.

3. Do you cycle? Do you train-ish? Alistair Brownlee ring a bell?

In this blog:

1. How to be rational in volatile markets

2. The client’s question: the maths of the value of planning your income.

3. Law Debenture or Claverhouse – AI for analysis, only when you know the question.

4. Don’t worry, be happy

In this blog:

1. Money – The Danger of Overthinking

2. Murray International

3. Law Debenture

4. When data lies and hallucinates – the acute danger of DIY.

5. What the client wrote…

In this blog:

1. Inflation is created in two ways: a demand-pull on prices, and a cost-push.

2. It’s not an investment; it’s an M&S investment.

3. Duration: what it is, what it’s not, do NOT invest in bonds or gilts without knowing.

4. Winner takes all: why women are the ultimate controllers of personal wealth.

5. The Big 5 Retirement Risks: and how to mitigate them.

In this blog:

1. How not to invest.

2. How to invest through crashes.

3. How to read investment trust data: F&C has never missed a dividend since start in 1868.

4. It’s not guaranteed, but does it make it any less likely?

In this blog:

1. How to get a 7% income yield on your pension, or, ‘Can you fix a leaking sink?’

2. To retire or not – how to tell when the time is right.

3. Why investment trusts and not unit trusts? Here’s why: we rely on data, not opinion, so here’s the data.

4. The later it gets, the less inhibited many become. (You should have grown out of the 4 am taxi ride by now).

In this blog:

1. Avoid the errors others make.

2. How the portfolio incomes have measured up against inflation.

3. The insides of the Rolls Royce final salary pension engine.

4. A Family Investment Company: what is it, and should you?