Retirement might be some ways off for you right now, especially with the ever-increasing retirement age in the UK; for those born after April 1977, the retirement age will be 68 for those wanting to claim a state pension.
But it’s never too early to put plans in place for your retirement so you can maintain your quality of life and live comfortably once the time comes for you to stay good at working.
If you have moved employers and have paid into pension funds for each employer, then you need to find out where these pensions are and how much is in them. This can give you a good idea of how much you can expect to get once you reach qualifying age. The Pension Tracing Service is a free government service that can help you to locate old pensions.
Always go through the legitimate Gov website to ensure you aren’t being scammed or made to pay for this free search feature.
One of the best ways to help you prepare for retirement is to get your finances in order. For example, you might want to prioritise your debts and get them paid off so you’re not in debt once you retire or have lower debt levels. It might be that you start looking at paying into a pension, building a savings fund, investing for the future, or even adding passive income streams to help support yourself once you retire.
It’s a good idea to think about your living arrangements once you retire. Everyone will have different needs and requirements. For many people, remaining in their own homes is the right option for them. For others, care homes like Oakland Care are the right choice and looking into the type of accommodation and support available can help you to secure a place when the time comes, or it might be you decide you want to move abroad and retire in a different country; Spain and Florida are popular retirement locations for many Brits once they reach their senior years.
This can often be overlooked as an essential factor when preparing for retirement, but even if you have health issues right now, doing what you can do to improve your health in any way will serve you well. This can be making minor changes to your diet to eat more nutritious foods, reduce the amount of highly processed foods and drink more water. You can reduce your alcohol consumption, stop smoking and start exercising. Even a gentle walk a few times a week can be beneficial if this is all you can manage; walking is one of the most underrated exercises and brings enormous benefits. You can join a gym, start playing sports, swim regularly or work at home to improve or preserve your mobility and strength.
It’s natural to expect to experience some level of cognitive decline as you get older; however, you can do many brain health activities to help you slow down or reduce the loss of grey matter as you head towards your senior years. Challenge yourself to learn something new as much as possible, engage in brain training games like sudoku and crosswords, or read anything and everything. All of these options can help you to keep your brain active and healthy and reduce the impact ageing has on your mental and cognitive abilities.
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