Let’s face it in life there are a couple of things that we cannot change. We are always going to pay tax on what we earn, and we will all get older and things will cost more.

Well then we have two choices, get poorer as we get older or do something to prevent not having money in a period of life where we should have more free time and hopefully more hobbies.

Now we all know that different people have different views on pensions and many say “my house is my pension” “my business is my pension” “the state will look after me” “pension funds steal my money” “I am better doing a buy to let”

We like to think that with our forward thinking approach we could agree with any of the above statements, but would though also like to think that if you had a mixture of retirement ideas this is going to help you reach the goals in a more structured way.

Let’s face facts according to National Statistics website 7th March 2008 in 2005 there were 9.8 million individuals with Personal and Stakeholder pensions in the UK. 5.9million Males and 3.9 million of this half of men and two thirds of women had less than £10,000 in their pension funds.

We hope that one of the other assets helped them achieve their goals in retirement!

We would work closely with you to establish the best route to achieve your goals and aspirations by considering all routes of retirement planning. This should then mean that you will not be reliant on one source of income in retirement and could have several schemes in place to provide you with the money you will require.

Following a legislation change in 2006 we now have less pension options than before. This does not mean that pensions have got any simpler to choose, but it does mean that the benefits from all pension schemes post 2006 have the same rules.

All regulated pensions schemes currently have tax relief granted on the contributions which means that you can either get additional monies paid into the scheme by the government, or reduce a companies tax bill by paying into pensions for their staff.

Our approach to pensions is simple, listen to what the customer needs and find the most suitable plan from the market place. In finding the correct regular and single funded scheme we will consider Stakeholder and Personal Pension schemes, together with the Self Invested Pension.

For those of you lucky enough to have reached retirement the decisions to be made can be mind blowing. “What annuity do I need” “What do my family get if I die” “How much tax will I pay” “I don’t want to retire yet but want some cash”

This should be a time of great happiness for you and instead you are worrying about your income in retirement!

The choices for you at retirement are many, but your existing provider may offer you two choices buy our annuity or buy one from another annuity provider.

We believe you may have more choice than this and can offer advice on the most tax efficient route for your pension income, and ensuring that on death those you want to benefit can.

This can be achieved by using existing provider annuity, new provider annuity, Income Drawdown, Phased Drawdown, and a combination of any of the above.

You may not need a pension and we really hope you don’t, but we are here to help make this easier for you if you do.