1. What should our retirement look like?

Notice we’re not asking you what a ‘great’ retirement looks like, or how the ‘ideal’ retirement should play out. We’re asking about yours.

This is perhaps the most important thing to get clear right at the beginning.

Throughout your life the things you’ve worked for have been very real, concrete and relatable goals – putting the kids through university, paying off the mortgage, building your business. They relate to the future, but it’s a future that doesn’t feel so very far away.

When it comes to retirement there’s a tendency for the idea to become less well defined, more nebulous. It’s not always easy to project ourselves into retirement, because it’s often something we think of as happening to ‘other people’. Retirement can feel like a distant, alien entity made of golf, cruises, second homes in Marbella and gardening. Mirror, mirror on the wall...

“If golf is your thing, great, but if it isn’t then you should spend some serious time working out what is.”

But project yourself you must, because your retirement is every bit as concrete, every bit as deserved as all the other goals you’ve spent your life working towards. That’s why you need to know exactly what you want from it, to make sure you don’t drift into a kind of default retirement or one that you’re ill-prepared for. If golf is your thing, great, but if it isn’t, then you should spend some serious time working out what is. Your retirement is yours. It’s for you.

It’s your job to decide what you want, and it’s ours to set out how you’ll get it, how you’ll keep it and how you’ll protect your wealth now and in future.