Our financial planners are here to help you define realistic financial goals for yourself and to assist you in reaching those goals.

DSA services meet the following essential needs

• A tailored financial plan
• Flexibility to accommodate changes in personal objectives, legislation and investment options
• Cost-effective implementation of each personal investment strategy
• Objective, unbiased advice

Essentially you need to determine how much it is that you would need to live comfortably on at retirement. This figure is normally arrived at by looking at your current expenses and determining which of these will still be present at retirement and which will fall away. For example, rates and taxes remain irrespective of your age or family size, however education costs and bond repayments should fall away completely in retirement.

We use life assurance mortality tables in order to determine what the life expectancy is for someone currently at your proposed retirement age. Factors such as the average longevity of your parents and grandparents would also be taken into account. Then we would agree on what inflation rate to take into account as well as what annual increase you require annually for your pension, this allows us to calculate the lump sum required in order to provide RXX per month for XX years with income increasing at XX% each year. Simple really!

The initial step in post retirement planning is to determine what type of fund you belong to - a pension, provident, or retirement annuity? Pension funds and retirement annuities allow you a maximum withdraw of one third in cash at retirement whereas provident funds allow you to take the full lump sum.

Taxation plays an important role in post retirement planning; currently legislation allows only a portion of the one third you take in cash from your pension fund or retirement annuity tax-free, with the same rule applying provident funds.

Having established what your income requirements are in retirement and taken the important taxation factors into account, a tailor made investment plan can be devised and implemented with your retirement savings.

Retirement planning is something that must be taken seriously! If you are five years out from retirement and you haven't seen a financial planner yet, be warned, you are treading on dangerous ground. In fact, if you have reached the grand old age of forty, and haven't started to focus on retirement, then heed the warning signs!