As successive governments keep reminding us, too few people plan properly, if at all, for their retirement; too few people appreciate that an investment now is an investment in their future throughout retirement.

When the investment in your personal pension plan reaches maturity when you retire, you will need to transfer its accumulated value into a regular income for the remainder of your retirement.

Independent financial advice is needed by anyone wanting to ensure that their hard-won money works its hardest for them. There are good ways and there are not such good ways, there are efficient means and less efficient means of literally getting the best value for money – and independent financial advice will point you in the direction of the best routes and the best financial products available.

Before considering whether it is a good idea, it might be helpful to take a quick look at just what is pension drawdown. Replace that "drawdown" with "withdraw" and it can perhaps be most readily understood as the ability to withdraw money from your pension fund and leave the balance invested, so that (hopefully) it continues to grow.

Retirement planning requires patience and choosing the right vehicle can determine the success of your nest egg.

Everyone knows that the younger you are when you start paying into a pension, the more you’ll receive when it’s time to pay out on your retirement. Nevertheless, there are still many who delay making that start and a frightening number of people who believe that their entitlement to a basic State pension will be enough to see them comfortably through old age.

Today, it's difficult to distinguish one financial institution from another as they compete for the ever-growing pool of investment dollars. Insurance companies, now publicly owned, have become am integral part of an industry that seems uninterested in protecting anything other than their obscenely paid leaders.

I propose that we throw out the term "retirement" and replace it with "The Harvesting Phase". For Baby Boomers who have no intention of sitting down and"retiring", The Harvesting Phase is a time of lively engagement in life with an enhanced sense of choice about how we will use our time and energy.

At the risk of sounding facetious, an independent financial adviser is someone who gives independent advice on financial matters. In fact, stating the rather obvious in this way put an important stress on the three vital components of the independent financial adviser’s role.

What is an annuity? An annuity is a regular monthly income stream that a person receives after an initial investment of money. Answering the question, "What is an annuity?" is a lot more complicated, of course.