New research by Zurich Insurance has shown that people in the UK are not retiring at the expected age, primarily because they have not planned their finances adequately.
Almost two thirds of Brits at retirement age are thinking of remaining at work, with nearly a third also expecting to have to work as they need the money. Another third though are doing it simply to stay active, in both mind and body, which shows how society and lifestyle has changed said a Zurich Insurance spokesman.
There are so many financial pressures in modern society meaning that retirement costs more than ever. This is a realisation that some people are coming to only now said Zurich Insurance, showing how important good pension planning is.
The Prudential has found that new pensioners are not budgeting effectively for retirement, spending more in the first year and then finding it harder to manage.
Almost thirty percent of newly retired people spent much more in their first year of retirement compared with others, averaging an extra GBP8,000 more. Of the people that did spend more the Prudential found that nearly one in five of them regretted doing it.
Interestingly less than a third of newly retired people actually set a budget for spending, which is curious since having a fixed income, usually smaller than that they have just left, would make a budget pretty much essential thought a Prudential representative.
The investment management team at Legal and General is currently looking at the future of pension schemes, concerned by the many different rules and regulations that are being placed on them.
Since 2001 there have been over 400 different pension regulations said a Legal and General spokesman, and there is concern that they are making it more difficult to attract people into company pension schemes because of all the red tape that now seems to surround them.
What a Legal and General pension customer wants is to understand the basics of how it works and have a pretty good idea of the final return when it comes to retirement. The many different regulations are moving further away from this basic concept and are making things much harder to explain in laymans terms.