DIY investor
Andy Davis
Our emptying pension pot
The point of most investment is to create income and assets for the time when we will no longer support ourselves through work. Increasing the value of our savings by investing them is inevitably a slow process so we do best to focus on long-term goals, notably our pension.
That’s how today’s personal and occupational pensions work. But what about the income we are promised by the state? Ostensibly the same principle applies. During our working life we build up a state pension by paying National Insurance (NI) contributions (although the self-employed, including me, pay a lower rate than employees). Then, when we retire, our decades of contributions to the National Insurance Fund deliver our basic retirement income, in my case from the age of 67.