Life cycle of a pension

In association with

You can’t escape cycling these days with everything from the Tour de France, Tour of Britain and even dare I say the Tour of Yorkshire.

What? I hear you ask. Well bear with me and I will explain.

A young cyclist progresses from wobbling on stabilisers to building their confidence on a simple and basic bike, let’s say a Halfords special.

Let’s turn the pedals a little further and we find our young cyclist has matured a bit and started his or her first forays into racing and competition.

This is the point in your retirement journey where you have perhaps accumulated a few pensions and it is time (age 30-45) to consolidate into something better and with features more suitable for your needs. Most likely you may not understand quite what these needs are and so this is where advice can be invaluable.

The bikes are more expensive but their relative value is still there in what they can do and how they can do it. We’re talking carbon fibre and electronic gearing potentially. This is the point (age 45-60) when our pension client has one eye on the prize – retirement.

Fast forward to the ultimate, the Tour de France. Three weeks of stages with everyone a different challenge. You have the bike, the fitness, the expectation of success, but this is the Tour de France and anything can happen – a crash, a mechanical, a puncture.

For this we have our retirement phase (60+ typically) where you need to navigate early retirement and the need to access more money to do the things you couldn’t when you were working; mid retirement when your expenditure tails off and you are riding comfortably in the peloton and then the spike of effort at the end which may see increased expenditure to meet care costs. All of which requires somebody to be advising you from the following team car. That team car is us – PM+M Wealth Management, for your Tour de France.