What Does a Good Retirement Look Like? Planning for the Life You Want

Over the last few months, we’ve explored several core themes around retirement, from sustainable income and the State Pension to inflation and longevity. At Ifamax Wealth Management, our journey began more than 20 years ago, and from the very start, we approached financial planning differently.

How Financial Planning Has Evolved

Financial advice has changed dramatically over the last few decades:

  • 1990s and earlier: The industry focused heavily on selling financial products.

  • 2000s: The focus shifted towards investment expertise and portfolio construction.

  • Today: True financial planning centres on people, their goals, values, priorities and fears, not just money.

When Ifamax was founded, we were among the early firms to recognise that great financial advice must start with understanding the person first, not with selling a product or chasing the highest investment return.

For more than two decades, we’ve walked alongside clients through redundancy, career change, retirement transitions, illness, bereavement and everything in between. That human connection is the foundation of our work.

Retirement Is Changing

Retirement today looks nothing like it did a generation ago:

  • Nearly 20% of the UK population is now over 65.

  • Around 14 million people are currently in retirement.

  • There is no longer a single “retirement age.” Many people phase into it gradually.

Despite this, many of the numbers we see in advertising or simple “magic figures” still assume everyone lives the same retirement. They don’t. And they never have.

The Retirement Living Standards provide useful benchmarks, but they can’t tell you:

  • How you want to spend your time

  • What brings you joy

  • Who you want to support

  • Your hopes, fears or personal ambitions

That is why at Ifamax, our Bristol-based financial planners have taken the approach we established 20 years ago and evolved it specifically for modern retirement planning.

Your Retirement: Understanding What Matters Most

Before retirement, the focus is often on accumulating assets, such as pensions, ISAs, savings, and investments.

But the moment you retire, the focus shifts. It becomes about:

  • Sustainable income

  • Maintaining your lifestyle

  • Managing tax efficiency

  • Ensuring your wealth lasts for life

Many people underestimate this shift, but it is one of the most critical transitions in financial planning.

To create a retirement that genuinely works for you, we spend time understanding:

  • What retirement means to you

  • What your ideal week or month looks like

  • What you’re excited about

  • What you’re worried about

  • How your needs might change over time

For long-standing clients, we have walked this journey together for many years. For new clients, our process often feels refreshingly different from the traditional financial advice experience.

A Retirement Built Around You

We believe that a good retirement is personal, not something defined by generic figures or one-size-fits-all rules.

Only when we understand your vision of a fulfilling life can we:

  • Map out your essential and discretionary spending

  • Build a sustainable withdrawal strategy

  • Integrate the State Pension

  • Protect against inflation

  • Plan for health changes

  • Ensure you can grow, protect and pass on your wealth

  • Stress-test your plan to ensure it lasts

This is how we deliver a retirement plan that is robust, flexible and deeply aligned to your values.

The Ifamax Approach: 20 Years of Helping Clients Retire With Confidence

As noise and uncertainty around retirement continue to increase, rising pension ages, inflation pressures, tax changes and market volatility, our role is to provide clarity and calm.

What sets Ifamax apart is not just our heritage, but how we’ve evolved our financial planning philosophy over time. Our approach blends:

  • Evidence-based investment strategies

  • Tax-efficient planning

  • Cashflow modelling

  • Behavioural insight

  • A deep understanding of who you are

We believe retirement planning shouldn’t just be about making the numbers work—it should be about helping you build a retirement that feels meaningful, secure and entirely personal to you.

start your journey today

 

Risk warning  

 

This article is distributed for educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or an offer of any security for sale. This article contains the opinions of the author but not necessarily the Firm and does not represent a recommendation of any particular security, strategy, or investment product. Reference to specific products is made only to help make educational points and does not constitute any form or recommendation or advice. Information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable but is not guaranteed.  

Ashton Chritchlow