This article is part of Morningstar's Guide to Retirement Saving. All this week we are arming you with the tools you need to secure the best possible retirement income.
Emma Wall: As of April 6, we are now living in a world of pension freedom. What does this mean? It means that the government has decided to treat us all like grown-ups; George Osborne used that exact phrase. We are allowed to access our own cash, so that cash that we've been diligently putting away while we're working up until retirement, once you retire, you can now get your hands on that pension port.
Of course, there are couple of stipulations. You can only take 25% tax free, after that even if you want to take it all in a cash lump sum, you will have to pay some tax and then maybe some exit charges depending on who you've had your pension with.
So we don't have to buy annuity with this anymore. That means the asset management industry is obviously given us a plethora of other options. So, people have come out and said what about an Equity Income Fund, look at my great Multi-Asset Income Fund with alternatives that could help you provide an annuity like income, but with the opportunity of capital growth.
The one thing that we would say at Morningstar is make sure you have all your options ready, that you're looking all the information available to you. While choice is great and pension freedom is great, the fact that we don't have to buy an annuity is of course a positive thing.
Annuities still remains the only thing on the market that provides a guaranteed income for life and life expectancy is getting greater. You could be in retirement as long as you've been saving, working. So having something that absolutely guarantees an income for you until the day you die is no bad thing.