Henry Cobbe: The upside-down world of decumulation investing

Do the retirement maths

clock • 3 min read

In the first of a new series on different aspects of the decumulation phase of retirement planning, Henry Cobbe argues liability-relative investing may be complicated but the key questions for retirement maths are not

Investing for decumulation could really be called ‘upside down investing'. In essence, it is the mirror image or opposite of accumulation. Instead of regularly paying money in to grow a pot, you are regularly taking money out to run it down. The objectives are different, the risks are different, so the strategies should be different too. When making a retirement plan for a client nowadays, advisers have to consider three questions: * How much do they have now? * How much do they need on an annual basis? * How long do they have to live? The tools for assessing suitability i...

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