Transcript

Welcome to the transcript of our video, Retirement – are you doing it right?. This page provides the full text version of the content, making it easy to read, reference, or search through specific topics covered in the video. Whether you prefer reading over watching, want to quickly scan for information, or need an accessible alternative to video, this transcript is here to help.

Interviewer: Okay, Simon. So, we’re starting to envisage what our future selves look like, what are the next steps in, in a practical sense, and are people doing retirement, right?

Simon Prescot: Yeah. So, I’d like to use an analogy of perhaps mountaineering here. So, if you ask the average person, what is the purpose, what’s the point of climbing a mountain? Often, they’ll answer by saying it’s to get to the top.

If you ask an experienced mountaineer, they’ll answer in a very different way. So, they’ll say, getting to the top is only part of the journey. And it’s optional. Actually, getting back down safely is the most important bit and mandatory. And in mountaineering around about 80% of all accidents actually occur on the way down.

So that might be through the exhilaration of reaching the summit. You let your guard down a little bit, you know, there might be a loose gravel and so forth. So, we can apply that analogy to, uh, somebody’s financial life. So, when you’re younger, you know, you’re in the accumulation, the ascent stage, and you are saving, you’re investing, you save some more, you try and build as big a pot as possible. And there are certain paths you need to take to make sure you’re doing that efficiently.

But once you’ve reached that summit, that financial independence, it’s retirement phase, you then start drawing on your money.

And there are very different risks when you start drawing on the money, just like on mountaineering, very different risks when you’re drawing on money that people aren’t really aware of.