Coronavirus, retirement on hold, how to move forward

[Eagleye]

Apologies for yet another virus thread, I can't see one addressing what I'm about to raise so thought I'd put this up for discussion as others may be in the same position as my brother is and I'm wondeting how to advise him.

He was due to retire shortly at 55. I say retire but he was pretty much there as he was only working 1 day a week anyway.

He tells me his planned pension income has crashed as a result of recent events so his retirement looks like it's going to be put on hold.

I don't know how his pension was invested but he tells me it represents a huge reduction in income.

Are any of you in a similar position and how are you going to move forward?

What kind of pension investemet did you have and what are you going to do now?

[Kermit power]

Sadly, that's just remarkably poor planning by your brother. All guidance is to gradually move your pension investments from stocks to cash and bonds over a 5 year period leading up to your retirement, specifically to avoid this sort of situation.

[Eagleye]

One thing we can never accuse my brother of is good planning.

Is anyone else in a similar position?

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Yes. Aged 57, was planning to go at 60, maybe a bit before. Had a meeting with my pensions guy in January, he was snowed under, so we scheduled another meeting after he'd got over the craziness of the tax year end, so in April or May, when we would start the process of coming out of stocks and shares and into govt bonds etc.

Anyway, suffice to say, unless there's a massive bounce back, I won't be going at 60, or 70, or 80!!

What can you do? My mum is 80, so let's get thru this crisis, with everyone I know and care about still alive, and I'll worry about it then.

[Munter]

Imagine. Being old enough to still believe in retirement before you're predicted to be dead. That must be really nice.

Sounds like he might just have to suck it up, keep working and join the fate of the following generations who're expecting to retire in their 70's if at all.

[Eagleye]

Yes, there's far more important things in life than pensions.

Love my brothers attitude to life.

He has no issue with carrying on working.

[Kermit power]

Eagleye said:

Yes, there's far more important things in life than pensions.

Love my brothers attitude to life.

He has no issue with carrying on working.

Thing is, though, all he would've needed to do was take thirty seconds to change his retirement age with his pension provider to 55, and the wouldn't have had this problem...

I just checked the value of my main pension fund. It's currently sitting at £220k. Six weeks ago, it was worth £308k!

Fortunately, I wasn't planning on retiring for another decade yet anyway, so it has time to bounce back, and if it doesn't, then I suspect that'll mean we've all had to adopt to a "new normal" anyway, but I will now be changing the retirement age to 60 from the default 67!