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How Your Changing Life will Affect Your Pension
Pensions are usually the furthest thing from your mind when you're dealing with a life-changing event. When times are tough and you're going through serious life changes, thinking too hard about the future can be problematic. However, those life changes could have more of an impact on your future than you might think.
Portafina has compiled a list of tips so that understanding what happens to your pension in those stressful and chaotic times is much easier. If you have any questions about your current pension plan, visit Portafina’s Facebook page for useful information that may help answer your qualms.
Below are four life changes that may affect your pension, along with guidance on how to deal with them regarding your pension.
1: Moving Abroad
If you’re planning to move to sunnier climes when you retire, then you need to look at how your pension will be affected. With so many retirees choosing to spend their twilight years abroad, far too many forget or neglect to check their pension arrangements.
Moving to another country could mean that you have difficulties accessing your pension, which could make retirement a bit more stressful than you hoped. You may also encounter problems with any tax relief that you receive, so always check your pension requirements before you start packing your bags.
2: In the event of redundancy
Being made redundant is stressful enough, but you need to be aware that any workplace pension scheme that you’ve paid into, is not completely lost. Even if you have no new job to walk into, any payments that have already been made will remain ours.
Once you have a new job and pension scheme, be sure to ask whether you can transfer your current workplace pension over to your new one.
3: Bankruptcy Assets
Your pension savings are not considered as assets that can be seized if you declare bankruptcy. However, declaring bankruptcy will affect how you can continue making savings into your pension, and may also change when you can claim and access it. Make sure that you know where you stand with your pension if you find yourself facing bankruptcy.
4: Serious Illness
Some people think that if they are forced to quit work earlier in their lives than they expected, that they will have no problem accessing their pension. While this may be true of some workplace or private pensions, it is not true of the state pension.
If illness has forced you out of work, then don’t make the mistake of thinking that your state pension will have you covered. For an illness that is affecting your life to the point where you are unable to work, it’s worth looking at any existing pension plans that you have in place. Some will allow you to start accessing your savings early in the right circumstances.
Pensions can sometimes seem quite complicated and even daunting to contemplate. If you're concerned about your pension or you have any questions, then Portafina can be found on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Make sure that your future is much safer by knowing where you stand with your pension at all times.
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