Age Increase for Access to Private Pensions

Photo by **Ena Marinkovic** from **Pexels**

Dreaming of lazy days relaxing with a nice cup of tea or coffee pondering what useful contribution you will make that day?

Well, you may have to put that thought on hold, at least for another couple of years, thanks to the government.

From 2028, the minimum age at which those with a private pension can access their funds will rise by two years from 55 to 57. This was originally announced back in 2014 but the legislation was not amended to include provision for implementing the change.

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/john-glen

On the 28th August, Labour MP Stephen Timms tabled the question asking the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans he has to increase the minimum age at which people can access their private pensions.

John Glen (pictured right), Secretary to the Treasury, responded with the following statement on the 3rd September.

“In 2014 the government announced it would increase the minimum pension age to 57 from 2028, reflecting trends in longevity and encouraging individuals to remain in work, while also helping to ensure pension savings provide for later life.”^[1]

This change will affect those in their mid-forties or younger with any future plans of retiring early at 55 or drawing down to supplement their salary will have to wait a further two years. This may not sound terrible, but it does demonstrate that the government are willing to poke their finger into the personal finance pie.

There is no saying whether the government will return to private pensions in the future making additional changes to the age at which we can access our pension.

In my opinion, if I choose to invest money in a private finance vehicle then it should be up to me when I access it, in accordance with the investment criteria that is. Private pensions and investments should provide individuals with options on how they spend their years whether that be working or pursuing other interests.

Mr Glen suggests that the change will encourage “individuals to remain in work” – well, what if individuals do not want to remain in work? If we have worked hard and invested wisely, it should be our decision to make. Some may be happy to stay in work and that’s fine, nothing wrong with that at all, but others there may be something else they want to try out to increase their happiness and wellbeing.

Despite my feelings on this I will continue to contribute to my private pension, I still feel like it is the right thing for me to do at this time, plus it would be silly of me to not take advantage of my company matched contribution too.

I will, however, be reviewing my numbers and adjusting accordingly to accommodate this change. I expect it will mean that I will need to depend on a higher level of income from my ISAs for those two years if I am at the point of Financial Independence by the time I reach 55.

How do you feel about this change?

Will it affect your plans for financial independence or early retirement, and how will you mitigate the change?

References

1. Glen, J. (03/09/2020). Pensions – Question for Treasury. Retrieved from https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2020-08-28/81494 on 13/09/2020.

July 2020 update

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July was the first month back at full-time which was great news for my bank balance but I had kind of gotten used to working four days and having the long weekends! My team were amongst the first to go back to full-time with the developers and QAs returning the start of August.

Photo by **Andrea Piacquadio** from **Pexels**

No more lounging around in my back garden on Fridays (not really my backgarden!).

Work itself has been pretty busy since returning to a five day week, but that’s a good thing as we still have customers in the pipeline.

Several people have opted to remain at 80% as they have found it is a better fit for their circumstances, I must admit that I was tempted but it doesn’t feel like the right time just now. In hindsight, the one day off each week could have been seen as a step toward semi-retirement but I am still in my wealth-building stage and I could do with the extra pay to help meet my goals.

One of the perks my company offer is the ability to buy or sell annual leave. There are typically quite a few people that take advantage of this each year and purchase the maximum additional leave of five days.

With the COVID-19 situation though, and not being able to travel, I still have the majority of my leave left so I decided to sell some back. A couple of weeks ago I received confirmation that this had been agreed and I’ll now be credited with an additional £100/month gross to my salary each month for the rest of the year.

My monthly figures are shown below, generally okay in the good areas but spending was up significantly on June. The increase in my company pension is mentioned just below…

Company Pension

Before the reduced hours, I had been contributing 12% toward my company pension via salary sacrifice. I increased my rate of contribution to 15% when my salary was cut as I didn’t want to impede my pension growth. My plan is to leave my contribution rate the same going forward meaning I’ll be tucking away a bit extra month-on-month.

Additional Income Streams

In addition to my salary, I am trying to create and nurture additional income streams.

FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) Sales £51.39 profit
eBay Sales £14.14 profit (June £101.65)
Matched Betting £20.00 free bets £0 real money

eBay sales are pretty much a no-brainer, anyone can do this, and the items sold during July were all sourced from my home. I’ve currently got a stack of things to photograph and list so it’s something of a backburner task. One of the advantages of selling on eBay is their postage service – they have agreements with a few courier firms offering discounted rates which tend to be cheaper than Royal Mail. I can opt to print the postage label in store (handy as I don’t have a printer at home) and then walk to the local shop which is about 20 minutes away to drop off the item(s).

FBA takes a little more effort and this months sales were generated from a couple of sets of Joe Wicks saucepans which I had purchased from Dunelm Mill a while ago in a sale. They had been sitting around at home for ages so I finally decided to get them sent in and listed. Glad I did as they both sold within a week on being received at the distribution centre.

Matched Betting – I only just signed up for this at the very end of the month and I am still working through the tutorials from OddsMonkey* (this is weenie’s affiliate link as I’m not yet a Premium member). Thus I have only unlocked some free bets and yet to realise real money that I can withdraw and invest.

Future Fund

This is something I picked up from weenie over at quietlysaving, after finding out what it is and what kind of things it includes I have decided to start tracking my own future fund (thanks weenie!).

This month, I’ll just report the figure – seems little point in me creating a graph for just one data point! 😀 – which is £90,129. I’m pretty sure this number will increase as I have to analyse my Hargreaves Lansdown ISA as I currently have holdings there which are ring-fenced for my kids.

Included in this figure are my pensions (excluding my defined benefits pension), ISAs, and cash savings. I won’t be including my CrowdCube investments as the investments made here cannot currently be liquidated. Also excluded is the equity in my home.

What kind of side hustles or income streams do you have? I’d be very interested to hear what you are up to in order to speed up your journey to FI.

Also, if you haven’t already, find me on Twitter @ithefrugalist and give me a follow – I’ll be sure to say “hi” and follow you back 🙂

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June 2020 update

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Some good news on the work front this month, my team were told we would be returning to 100% hours from July – yay!

The entire workforce was put onto 80% time/salary at the start of May as a precautionary step to protect the financial wellbeing of the company. I was initially worried about the financial impact this reduction in hours would bring but we have coped fine thankfully, my wife picked up extra shifts so it lessened the blow a bit.

How did I perform financially? I’ve put together a few figures to try and establish some benchmarks for future months, there may be a bit more detail for some areas than others at the moment but I’m working on that.

Spending

This covers our expenses such as groceries, travel costs, pets, and any other discretionary spending for the month. Not sure how this would compare to other families of four but it is the lowest for amoutn spent in a month this year – not sure if that’s because we have been doing less or if I’ve messed up the tracking somewhere!

Travel costs are really low at the moment as my wife is cycling to work, I’m still working from home, and we have declared our car off road with the DVLA.

I anticipate a much improved accuracy for spending in July as I have taken up the use of an app called “Emma” which utilises the open banking here in the UK to amalgamate transactions and balances across mutliple accounts. More on this app in another post, but it you’d like to take a look and sign-up in the mean time, please use my link* as I earn in-app points 🙂

Credit Card

I was a little hesitant in adding this category as I feel a degree of shame about getting into credit card debt. In fact, I have carried around this type of debt since my twenties, occasionally paying off the balance in full only to build it back up again. But, as Vicki Robin says, “No shame, no blame”!

Decided to use some extra money we had to pay down the debt a bit more aggressively this month than we usually would. Feels good to see that number come down and also get the balance below 25% of my credit limit.

Having been listening to the ChooseFI podcast for a little while now, the idea of using travel reward credit cards has grown on me but I still harbour a “fear” of the cards and the trouble they can cause without sufficient will power.

Company Pension

I use salary sacrifice to make the most of my income, this reduces the amount of income tax I have to pay as my salary is effectively reduced. My company offer a 3% contribution match which I take advantage of plus I add a decent percentage on top of that.

The scheme is run by Scottish Widows and typically does okay but the 2019/2020 year ended in a negative performance percentage. This resulted in my pension pot losing a few hundred pounds despite the contributions.

Emergency Fund

Contributions to my EF were low this month, mainly because I forgot to add the money 🙁

Note to self: automate this to avoid the same happening again!

Pretty much all the podcasts and books talk about setting up an EF to cover three to six months of expenses, this feels pretty daunting when starting out. My first target is to cover one month’s worth, then I’ll aim for two months. I feel much more inclined to keep going when the goals are achievable, they don’t have to be easier but achievable none the less.

ISA, Freetrade

I opened my Freetrade ISA in May and added a further £310 to it during June. The cash balance was invested in funds according to my portfolio strategy which I’ll talk about in another post. I don’t have a magic link for Freetrade but if you are interested in opening an account (in the UK) then message me and I’ll send one through, we’ll both then earn a free share worth between £3 and £200 – nice!

That pretty much rounds out my thoughts on my June finances, a bit late in getting these written down and published but heh-ho 😀 Next month, I intend to get round to this a bit earlier and making small incrementally improvements to my systems should enable this.

Quick question for you, do you use reward credit cards? If so, what have they enabled you to do, what places have you visited courtesy of using these cards rather than using a debit card?

Thanks for making it this far! Let me know what your thoughts are on financial updates and the kinds of things you measure.

Have a great week 🙂

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Get started!

I have been telling myself this for ages – Just. Get. Started!

So I decided to sign up and start a blog to document my thoughts and my journey through frugality to become financially independent (FI). It is also about me being accountable, and hopefully hearing from others who are on this road – that is why I have decided to share this rather than keeping it all squirrelled away privately somewhere.

Often the speed at which I feel I am moving!

Today, I am not super-concerned with making this first post a thing of beauty but it’s the lever to get the ball rolling.

I have been reading and listening to several books on Kindle and Audible and saving money, investing, retiring early, and becoming FI and most of the time the basis for it all is “look after your money”.

This makes sense to me as to how can one become FI if they are spending all they earn, or worse, spending more than they earn.

To take the first steps to a better, happier life it seems key that I have an understanding of what money is coming in and where it is going. To this end, I think the first thing to do is to start tracking the expenses.

The good thing is that I have been recording my expenses, as best I could given that I’ve got a family who doesn’t necessarily share the same view as me, for about three years. This process has improved over time and I have recently added a few more categories to help identify more preciously what has been spent.

I’ll share the concept later on and when I’ve carried out a bit of analysis on the data, I’ll also share the results so you’ll be able to get a feel for what I’m doing.

It would be great if you could share in the comments below how you track your expenses!

I will add more as I can about my circumstances, both financial and personal, and there may also be other topics that creep into this blog such as my efforts to learn a foreign language or my fitness life.

The last thing I want to say right now is thanks for stopping by and reading this. Please do take a moment to comment below, it would be great to hear from like-minded people! 🙂