The Wealthy Retirement Plan: A revolutionary guide to living the rest of your life in style

By Vicki Wusche

The Wealthy Retirement Plan, a finalist in the Business Book Awards 2020 - under the coveted Specialist Book category, will change the way you think about your future, how and when you work and more importantly how and when you stop work.

Thinking about this now is crucial. Whether you plan to retire or loathe the concept of retirement, yo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Known Publishing
• Release date: Jan 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781912615865

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Thinking About Retirement

I believe the word retirement, as we know and use it, will disappear from the English language within a generation. As people live longer, they will want more from the time they have after leaving paid traditional employment.

More importantly, I believe employers and business owners will recognise the wasted talent and missed opportunities they are letting go each time someone new reaches a certain birthday and is forced to leave work.

This does not mean that we will all have to work longer, but some people will choose to take the opportunity to work, while others will contribute differently. Some may take their knowledge and experience into the community or charities, others may choose to be with family.

By the time you are in your mid-forties to mid-fifties, you are probably starting to examine where you are in your life, how the journey has been going so far, and whether you have achieved all that you had hoped for.

Maybe it is triggered by those aches and pains that hint at your advancing age… Maybe it occurs when your children leave for university (or worse, come home again). Or when you notice that your parents or grandparents are hitting significant birthdays – their 80th, or 90th or even older? Maybe you are already starting to subsidise your parents’ care needs while bringing up your own family, or even paying for your children to go to university. That drain on your savings will need to be replenished if you want to have enough money to retire in comfort, and most importantly avoid passing on the Retirement Debt Cascade!

There is something about this period of our life, or those key events, that makes us question whether we have achieved our goals. You know, that high-flying city career, running your own business, or simply paying off your mortgage. Maybe you are just feeling a bit tired and know that you want more than this daily routine. Maybe you even know what you want, but maybe you don’t. Maybe you’ve started to think about what comes next… retirement! Or maybe you are stuck on the merry-go-round, feeling sick and wishing you could just get off this ride, as it is not as much fun as was promised!

YOUR RETIREMENT COULD BE A LONG ONE – ARE YOU PREPARED?

We can easily expect to live into our eighties, as the norm, and for many more of us, our 90th and 100th birthday parties will need planning.

The idea of a long retirement to some people might seem scary, or even boring. Thanks to advanced medical care and innovation, we have the potential to live long and healthy lives. The happiness part is up to you and the plans that you make. The sad fact is that if you don’t have enough money, then a long, miserable and protracted life will await.

Right now, hundreds of thousands of people are woefully unprepared for their retirement, and will sadly become a drain on their families and the government. However, some people see these additional years as a bonus and plan to really enjoy them to the maximum, and that, of course, takes funds and a solid financial plan. To ensure happiness over misery, adventures over the guilt of draining your children’s resources, you need to take responsibility right now for your personal finances by making a plan and investing in your future retirement.

It is never too late to start planning, but the longer you leave it, the harder it will be, and the longer you will have to wait to reap the benefits. Right now is the perfect time for you to start to think about your retirement, so what are you waiting for? This does not mean buying life insurance from some TV advert to pay for the cost of your funeral. This is about planning how you are going to fund the next twenty, thirty, and possibly, forty years of your life. How you can create a complete, quality of life experience. This second life, a form of retirement, will be as long as the life you have just lived, all over again, just more fun if you plan it well.

This new life will need to be funded, enjoyed and designed as we will be the first generation to consciously experience it. Your wages will stop and a measly pension will be your only source of income unless you make a plan that makes a difference!

SECTION

1

IT’S DOWN TO YOU: WHY YOU CAN’T RELY ON THE TRADITIONAL RETIREMENT MODEL

INTRODUCTION TO SECTION 1

It’s Down to You: Why You Can’t Rely on The Traditional Retirement Model

The first section of this book will get you thinking about retirement in a new way, and bring new insights that are crucial to your future happiness. Before we can start building your perfect retirement, I want to shatter the illusion that you can just sit back and let the state take care of all your retirement needs.

I’m going to explain why the government is not prepared to fund the needs of a growing and ageing population. Similarly, I want to show you how traditional pensions work and how vulnerable they are to market shocks, from economic crashes to political events and natural disasters. Many people saw the value of their retirement pot shrink before their eyes in the crash of 2008.

Even if you don’t want to do anything dramatically exciting during your retirement, I assume that you won’t want to be a financial burden on your children or make them part of an ongoing retirement debt cascade!

If you think an inheritance will save you – think again. As we are all living longer, our parents are still alive. It makes more tax efficient sense that they will pass on their legacy to your children. As you live well into your 80s or 90s, or maybe even hit your centenary, you may even meet your children’s grandchildren. That’s a wonderful thought, but if you want to support yourself, not be a burden to your children and yet help them financially, you are going to need a better plan than you have now!

So, are you ready to see how broken the traditional retirement model is? Are you ready to start a journey that will enable you to imagine a new and exciting period of your life once you have given up full-time work? Are you ready to see through the inheritance illusion and find a new way to create your legacy?

CHAPTER

1

OLD AGE IS JUST TOO EXPENSIVE

This chapter will run through some stark realities that we face today. While everyone is focused on the short-term distractions of Brexit, they are missing the long-term implication of their own personal finances. A growing ageing population is draining the government budget, and fast. An evaluation of what kind of impact the population rise will have on the budgets (for the NHS, social care, elderly care, benefits and appropriate social housing for an ageing population) is being left to one side.

All this high-level government planning (or lack of sufficient planning) will impact directly on you over the next 10-40 years as you move deeper into your retirement.

Unless you want to become a burden on your family, you need to act now.

You cannot rely on the state to provide a comfortable retirement for you. You must create a financial plan now to ensure that you can afford extra support when you need it.

My own recent personal experiences of my elderly mother’s care needs have scared me more than the research I carried out for this book. Having some savings is worse than having none, as the support system for the elderly will not help you if you have savings, and yet you may not have enough money to support yourself or your family in the way that you need or would prefer!

Some of the things you are about to read may shock you. It is possible that, at the back of your mind, you may already know about some of the information but have chosen to ignore it. Throughout this chapter, I’ve used both my own personal experience and the best data I could find to illustrate the strain that is currently being placed on our public purse, but in the end, no amount of data will make a difference. Instead, only the decisions and actions you take as a result of reading this shocking chapter will make a difference and change your own life and the lives of your family for the better.

WE’RE LIVING LONGER

Medical innovations, such as joint replacements, organ transplants and radical innovations in the prediction, prevention, monitoring and treatment of many forms of cancer, can already save your life. My own double hip replacements and double shoulder repairs in 2018 literally transformed me from a life of disability into a bionic woman – from walking less than 500 steps in agony to over 23,000 with ease.

According to the Office of National Statistics¹, the life expectancy of our generation will be much longer than that of our parents. It is perfectly feasible that, given the rate of medical innovation and the life extension technology available, you could see your hundredth birthday with ease.

This is creating extra work for not only the Department of Work and Pensions, which now has a seven-strong team whose job is just to cope with the rise in people living over 100, but also for the Queen who regularly sends out 100th and 105th birthday cards. In fact, Her Majesty has had to take on extra staff to keep up with the demands of the 15,000+ supercentenarians as their number is rising by 400+ year on