Preparing For Retirement
What are the main financial hurdles I will have during retirement?
Well, the main financial hurdles are first, your income is going be less, and secondly, your pattern of spending is going to be completely different. You won't be going to work everyday. You will have other things to do. You might want to think about having off holidays. You are going to have to find the money maybe, for a new car, or a replacement car. How do you cope if you had a sudden expense on the house, you know, the roof needs repairing or the fence has blown down. So there will be all those things to deal with, and the things that you just have to spend. There will be your energy bills, your council tax. Things that are very, very hard to avoid, and those will take a bigger proportion of your income. So, again controlling those is going to be an important part of planning for retirement.
Do banks lend to people who are retired?
There used to be discriminations against all people by banks and it was really hard to get credit card or bank net. But nowadays, they are looking in your income and obviously if you want to borrow a lot of money and you haven't got an income to pay it back, they're going to be reluctant to lend you. But if you got a reasonable income there's no reason why someone over the pension age can't get a credit card, can't get a bank loan or of course they can borrow a money against the value of their own home and release money in that way. So, there are also financial services for all the people which should be available if not completely equal terms but very similar terms to what's available to the people in the 20's and 30's.
Where can retired people go for help when they face money troubles?
That depends what the money troubles are. If you've got debt, then there are two national organizations that help people with debt, the Consumer Credit Counseling Service and National Debt Line. They will offer free advice to you about how to deal with debt, so they're available to anyone of any age and a lot of older people are going to them now with debt. Citizen's Advice Bureau are very, very good to give people financial advice at all ages, but particularly when you're older. If you do have problems managing on the income you have, if you want to know about claiming extra benefits, whether it's help with your council tax or extra income. And of course the two big national charities, Healthy Aged and Age Concern. Those have very good leaflets, advice lines and web sites where you can find out a lot of information about money. And ultimately, of course, there is the Pension Service which is the bit of the Department of Work and Pensions. Ring them up, they have a free help line you can call.
