It’s great for my business and here’s my list of top 5 best things it does for me.

1 sending texts verbally is great when I’m on the move. Much quicker than navigating to the text function then to the right person and typing.

2 dictating my emails to people instead of using the fiddly keyboard.

3 I dictate my letters and meeting notes into an email now. And then send them to myself and paste them into a more useful format.

4 l Siri also gets a lot of commands like ?,() etc

5 when you absolutely need to know what movie somebody was in, you can ask Siri that as well.

Just prove it, I have dictated this blog post onto Siri and doing hardly any formatting afterwards.

Just a word of warning though, Siri did change one of my clients’ names to “idiot”. I can’t tell you what the name really was because it’s an uncommon name and you might know her.

He’s coming up for age 65 in June, so we met in November to do a bit of pre-retirement work and to talk about whether he could afford to get his money now, instead of waiting until June.

Mr T is not in great health and he’s also a widower.  These facts are huge advantages when we’re shopping for annuities and I put them to maximum advantage.

The first thing we talked about was the fact that his pensions are still invested in the stockmarket.  Great, if his fund goes up by 5% before he wants his money.  But what if it goes down by 5% instead?

“Risky.”  I said.  Naturally, we did something about that – straight away.

Here’s what I came up with for the annuity.  An extract from my letter says it most clearly:

“…Your two personal pension policies combined would provide you with a cash lump sum of £3,381.80 plus £605.40 per year.
The best rate I can find will provide £784.44 per year plus the same lump sum.

The buy-out plan from your old employer would pay £10,383.31 plus £1,557 per year which will increase by 2.5/3% each March to keep pace with inflation.
The best rate I can find to replace that would be £9,851 lump sum (slightly lower) plus £2,437.92 per year but it wouldn’t increase to counteract inflation…”

I have removed the pension company names but I can assure you that the names are three very well-known UK companies so you really should shop around.

How did I do it?  The clues are here: “…not in great health and he’s also a widower…”

I took a full medical history from Mr T and asked 8 annuity companies to give their best rate.  The rate tends to be higher for poorly people.  Now, Mr T is not that ill.  In fact, four of the 8 companies didn’t think he was ill enough to be worth an enhancement above their normal terms!

I also had a long discussion with Mr T about inflation.  Because of his health and – ahem – life expectancy, we agreed to do without inflation protection.  We talked about how damaging a long period of high inflation would be and how pensions lose their buying power when they are not linked to inflation.  But, we also talked about how much lower inflation-linked pensions start out at, compared to level pensions, and we talked about the fact that his old employer plan is not fully inflation-protected anyway.

Finally, we agreed to get rid of the widow’s benefit because Mr T is confident that he won’t re-marry.

In short, I just did my job.  Mr T is happy.  Who do you know could do with some help.  Call me, we can meet up if you’re local, but I can do annuities by post, too.

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Those of us lucky enough to earn over £50,000 have just seen a reduction in the amount we can pay into our pensions.

That was part of a range of new measures, each measure will affect someone; If you have been paying more than £50,000 into your pension, or if you were planning to make an extremely large pension contribution in the year you retire, or if you earn over £150,000 and you’re in a final salary scheme – especially if a significant pay rise is on the cards.

At the other end of the scale, if you’re almost 60 and your entire pension pot is worth just under£18,000 you may be affected, too.

The rules changed immediately they were announced on 14th October, so if you recognise any of those, you’ll need to do some rapid reading-up, or get some advice.

Please be aware that by clicking on to the above links you are leaving the Parsonage Financial Planning website. Please note that Parsonage Financial Planning is not responsible for the accuracy of the information contained within the linked sites accessible from this page

If you’re 30 now, you might file that under “whatever”.

If you’re between 50 and 54 now, you might want to think about whether the change will affect you.  Obviously, the younger you are, the longer you will have to wait to draw your pension.

The pension companies are already busy with this work, tons of people need information – at least – and some are choosing to, er, board the flight if you’ll forgive the metaphor.

If you are affected, don’t leave it until the last minute to think about it.

Take great care in advance if you’ve got any tax planning in mind: The last day of the tax year is 1 April this year (because of the Easter bank holidays).

This could make a huge difference if you’re facing 40% tax on severance pay.  It’s quite easy to do that because your redundancy sits on top of a whole year’s income, especially if you don’t expect to pay 40% tax in the new tax year.

The Financial Services Authority does not regulate Tax advice

So what?
Plan carefully. Take advice if you need it.

Drs H invested for income two years ago, when he retired.  Our second annual review will be on Friday.  I’ve begun preparing for that, with a performance review of all the funds and holdings within the funds.  Their brief was a sustainable income, with a long retirement in mind, so plenty of scope for the income to rise to keep pace with inflation. (Although, they haven’t started spending the income yet.  Maybe this time?)

Mr & Mrs S are new clients.  They’ve recieved a lump sum from an injury settlement, so it’s not a cheerful time.  They need a modest income, from a portfolio that can cope with changes in their objectives.  We’re at the begining of the planning process.

A different Mr & Mrs S need more income, so we need to change their investment brief.  They want a high level of income now, but with limited scope for protection from inflation.

Finally, Mr & Mrs M retired five years ago, but have been managing without an income from their investments.  Their children would rather that Mum & Dad enjoy the money, instead of struggling without it.  So, we’ve agreed to chase a useful level of income now, with some scope for protection from inflation.

Four customers, similar ages, similar wealth levels, and broadly similar objectives.  But there are some crucial differences, aren’t there?  They’re the bits I enjoy coming to work for!

Either, they can sell a simple range of products, which will have commission built in, so you don’t have to pay up front for their work.

Or, they can be professionals – highly qualified and charge fees for their work.

There’s a lot of argument at the moment about the finer points, but that is the upshot.

Please forgive the gung-ho marketing, but I’ve been waiting for this development since 1995.  I am already running with the second path for my business, three years early.  If you need advice about your money, and you want to know what you’re paying for that advice, we need to talk.

Here’s what I think.

Why are we so desperate to retire early?  I don’t think we’re designed to rest for a third of our lifetimes, and our life expectancy continues to get longer.  Even our “active” lives are getting longer, that is, before too many bits of us stop working entirely.

So, again, why are we so desperate to retire younger?

Is it because we work too hard?  We work really hard when we’re young, trying to get together tons of money so that we can stop working just before we get old.  It doesn’t make sense really.

I think it makes more sense to accept that we’ll have to work into our seventies (then maybe our eighties and nineties), but spread out the effort as well.  What might that mean, in practice?

Working moderately, perhaps saving less because we’re not fixed on saving it all for a life in the sun.  Like our grandparents did?

Does it sound a bit dull?  Doesn’t that depend on what we choose to do while we’re not working?

That makes sense to me, but maybe I’m just an idealist with my own business, so I can say “no” without fear of losing my job.  I enjoy what I do, so the thought of having to keep doing it doesn’t bother me too much.

The real problem may be that there aren’t enough jobs to keep us all busy.  But that’s another post, surely?

If you agree, or even if you disagree, tell me what you think?