Planning for Retirement: How to Make Your Money Last

If you're heading towards your 60s or approaching retirement, there's one question that should be at the centre of every financial conversation you have: how am I going to make this last? It sounds simple, but it's a profound shift. For most of your working life, financial planning has been about building, saving, and accumulating. Retirement is different. It's about converting everything you've built into an income that sustains you, potentially for a very long time.

A new chapter, a new plan

I often say to clients approaching retirement that we almost need to start from scratch. Not because what they've done up to now doesn't matter, but because they're entering a completely new phase of life. The transition from earning a salary to living on a fixed or limited income is one of the biggest financial changes most people will ever experience. It deserves its own plan.

That plan needs to answer some fundamental questions. What income will you have, and from where? What are your essential outgoings? What do you want your retirement to look like in your 60s, your 70s, your 80s? And critically, how long does this all need to last?

Planning to 90

None of us knows how long we're going to live, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But when I sit down with a client and work through a retirement income plan, I pull it out as far as possible. In practice, that usually means planning to around age 90. That might sound pessimistic or overly cautious. I'd argue it's the opposite.

In Ireland, life expectancy has increased significantly over recent decades. According to the CSO, a woman aged 65 today can expect to live, on average, into her mid-80s. A man the same age into his early 80s. Those are averages, which means a substantial proportion of people will live well beyond them.

Planning to 90 isn't about assuming the worst. It's about making sure that if you do live a long and healthy life, your money is still there to support you.

The income gap

One of the things that surprises people when we sit down to do this exercise is just how significant the gap can be between their pre-retirement income and what they'll actually have to live on. Between a state pension, a private or occupational pension, and any other income sources, most people will be working with considerably less than they earned in their final years of work.

That doesn't have to be a problem, but it does have to be a plan. Understanding exactly what you'll have coming in, when it starts, and how it might change over time is the foundation of everything else.

What retirement planning actually looks like

A good retirement plan goes beyond just pension figures on a page. It looks at the full picture: your income sources and when they kick in, your likely expenditure at different stages of retirement, your tax position, any assets you hold, your protection needs, and what happens to your finances if your circumstances change.

It also builds in some flexibility. Retirement isn't static. Your 60s might look very different to your 80s, in terms of what you're spending money on, what you need, and what matters to you. A plan that only works under one set of assumptions isn't really a plan.

The right time to have this conversation

Ideally, retirement planning starts well before retirement. But I regularly work with people who are already in their 60s and haven't had this conversation yet, and I want to be clear: it is absolutely not too late. The important thing is to have the conversation now, while there is still time to make decisions that will make a real difference.

If you're approaching retirement and you're not sure whether your finances are in the right shape, I'd be happy to talk it through. Sometimes all it takes is sitting down, looking at the numbers clearly, and making a straightforward plan. That's exactly what I'm here for.

Emma Farrelly is the founder and managing director of Future Financial Planning.

Get in touch at emma@futurefinancialplanning.ie