Accessing your hard-earned pension pot when you are ready to retire is a major milestone.
But deciding how and when to start taking money from your pension savings can influence how long the money lasts - and ultimately the lifestyle you can enjoy during your golden years.
As well as hopefully enjoying the returns from your retirement savings, money still needs to be available for bills and possibly your own long-term care.
Subscribe to MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Get 6 issues free
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Understanding when to retire, and how much money to take out of your pension to give you a reliable stream of income, is crucial.
That is especially important as the cost of retirement is rising.
The latest research from the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, a trade body, suggests retirees need an income of £43,100 per year for a "comfortable retirement".
Can applying the 4% pension rule help? We explain what it is and how it works.
What is the 4% pension rule?
A popular rule for pension savers is to take 4% of their fund in the first year of withdrawals and increase that by the rate of inflation each year. This is supposed to last a typical retiree 30 years.
Academics at the American Association of Individual Investors devised the 4% rule in 1998 after researching a sustainable withdrawal rate for a retirement pot that wouldn’t deplete the savings.
It looked at data from 1926 to 1995 and found that a rate of 3-4% is “extremely unlikely to exhaust any portfolio of stocks and bonds".
Can I rely solely on the 4% rule?
Like all rules of thumb, says John Corbyn, pensions specialist at the wealth manager Quilter, the 4% concept is based on certain assumptions.
“It needsto be overlaid with someone’s state of health and propensity to spend, which is likely to be higher for younger clients and lower for older clients,” he says.
“Care needs to be taken to ensure the attitude to risk and propensity for loss is also built into these assumptions.
“Depending on your risk tolerance, investment strategy, and the actual returns you get, you might consider a slightly more conservative withdrawal rate."
Corbyn says it is crucial to continuously review and adjust your strategy based on your actual investment returns, spending needs, and the broader economic landscape.
“Ultimately, pensions are a long-term savings vehicle and potentially may need to pay for someone’s income for up to 30-40 years, and care needs to be taken if the fund is accessed early, as short-term gain may lead to long-term pain so getting advice is key,” he adds.
Joshua Gerstler, chartered financial planner for The Orchard Practice, says that while the 4% rule is a good guide, in reality our spending patterns are not linear.
“We might want to spend more in the early years of retirement, for example, to travel around the world,” he says.
“Our spending may slow down as we get older and are less able to get out and about. Albeit this could be offset by an increase in care fees. If you have a financial plan then you will have a good idea of how much you can access without ever running out of money.”
It’s important to note that this strategy may not work for everyone and is just one of many factors to consider when retiring.
Make a retirement plan
What you plan to do with your retirement will also have a huge impact on when you should start accessing your pension pot, so it's a good idea to know what you want to do and the costs of doing it.
“If you have dreams of travelling the world then you might need much more retirement income than if you are content with a quiet life at home,” says Corbyn.
“It's essential to have a realistic projection of your monthly and yearly expenses, including contingencies for unexpected costs.
“Financial planners can help produce cashflow models that look at your holistic finances and show you how much you can expect to have and what kind of retirement lifestyle that will buy you.”
The importance of timing when retiring
You can’t help when you were born but it is worth thinking about when you start accessing your pension pot as market returns will have an influence on the success of the 4% rule.
Investment firm Fidelity recently attempted to see if the 4% rule had stood the test of time.
One major factor was timing.
It looked at the value of two £100,000 funds after 15 years – one starting in 2000 and one in 2003.
Despite there being just three years between their start points, the pot beginning in 2003 grew to be more than two-and-a-half times bigger than the pot beginning in 2000.
This is because the pot being accessed in 2000 was hit by the dotcom boom, so there wasn’t an opportunity to make up for these losses, while the 2003 pot benefited from the post-crash recovery.
Ed Monk of Fidelity suggests building flexibility into the strategy so you can avoid the worst time to sell your investments.
“Another tactic is to tweak your withdrawals in periods of falling markets so that you take just the income that is produced naturally from investments,” he says.
“This might include the dividends from company shares, income from funds or the interest from bonds. This might mean a lower level of income overall, but it means you won’t need to sell assets when their price has fallen.”
If you're retiring in a period of economic downturn, adds Corbyn, it may be wise to be more conservative with withdrawals, at least initially.
Gerstler suggests it is also important to consider other savings and investments held outside of pensions as part of your whole retirement strategy.
Don’t forget about tax
Whatever rule you use, experts say it is always important to consider the tax implications.
This is because beyond the 25% tax-free lump sum, you will need to pay income tax on withdrawals if you are earning above the tax-free personal allowance.
It may not take much to go above the £12,570 personal allowance, given the full new state pension is currently more than £11,500 a year.
“Tax planning is a crucial aspect of accessing a pension, and those who are thinking for instance of buying an annuity or accessing a pension flexibly by withdrawing taxable amounts should take note if they are earning or taking taxable income from elsewhere, including the state pension,” says Alice Haine, personal finance analyst at the investment platform Bestinvest.
“For someone drawing the full flat-rate state pension at the moment, additional income – whether from work or a private pension - of [just over £1,000] will take them over the personal allowance and into basic-rate tax.
“For those with larger pensions or higher incomes, there will be the potential risk of being taken into the higher or even additional-rate tax brackets, and some savers in drawdown should moderate their pension income to avoid this.”
