Research by Watson Wyatt has found that 25% of people in the 50-64 age bracket have decided to delay retirement due to the recent poor stockmarket returns and resulting falls in their pension fund values. The research also highlighted that 49% of those questioned had seen the value overall of their savings and investments fall.
Our view
This is where the need for professional advice prevails. In our opinion, if you're aged 50+ you should be considering or have already considered moving away from stockmarket linked investment anyway. If your adviser, if you have one, did not suggest that you start to downsize your exposure to risk after age 50 then perhaps you need to consider a new adviser. Risk is a personal thing and sometimes greed, lack of knowledge or indeed the "can't be bothered to review it" syndrome outweighs the logic of risk and can be very costly.
If you are not sure what sort of market exposure you should have based upon your age or attitude towards risk take a look at our definitions of risk.
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