Dan Haylett

Walk into any decent financial planning meeting right now, and you’ll find spreadsheets that can model your income to the nearest 50p in 2047. Monte Carlo simulations, tax wrappers, decumulation strategies, a charming cashflow chart with bars that go up and to the right. What you almost certainly will not find is anyone showing you you’re about to lose! That’s the bit that gets left out of the brochures. Retirement, especially the affluent flavour the financial industry is quietly selling...

I've been in financial planning for nearly a decade. I've watched, spoken with and heard from hundreds, maybe even thousands of people who walk into retirement with well-stuffed pensions, paid-off mortgages, and drawdown strategies Monte Carlo'd to within an inch of their lives. And I've seen a worrying number of them fall apart anyway. Not because the money ran out… because the people ran out. That's the bit nobody in the financial services industry wants to say out loud. They'll lecture you...

Let me tell you about a golf buddy of mine, let’s call him David. David is 68, and he retired two years ago with £1.2 million in pensions and savings. He owns his house outright, has no debt, and his income from pensions and investments is more than he needs to live comfortably. By every conventional measure, David has crushed his retirement planning. He did everything right, maxed out his contributions for decades, lived below his means, delayed gratification, was responsible, prudent,...