Is your pension keeping pace with your career?

A changing career calls for a changing retirement plan – discover how to keep your retirement plans on track.

A career in dentistry can change considerably from the day you qualify to the day you retire.

You might begin as an associate, increase your NHS or private commitments, become a practice owner or move away from NHS dentistry altogether. Later, you may decide to reduce your clinical hours, sell your business or exit dentistry earlier than you planned to.

As your career evolves, your income, priorities and financial circumstances should change with it. But your pension is one part of your financial plan that can be surprisingly easy to leave behind. So, is your retirement planning keeping pace with your career?

Build good habits early

Retirement can feel a very long way away when you’re at the beginning of your dental career. There are likely more immediate calls on your income, from getting onto the property ladder to repaying debt and simply enjoying the rewards of finally qualifying.

But the early years can still be an important time for your pension. If you’re carrying out NHS dentistry, understanding how you’re building benefits in the NHS Pension Scheme is a useful starting point. It’s also worth beginning to think about what other retirement provision you may need during your career.

You don’t need to have your retirement mapped out in your twenties or thirties. Your plans will almost certainly change. The important thing is to start engaging with your pension early, understand what you’re building and make reviewing it part of your financial routine.

Don’t let your pension stand still

As your career progresses, your earning potential may increase – but your financial commitments often grow too.

You might be buying a larger home, starting a family or considering practice ownership. With several competing priorities, increasing your retirement savings may not automatically make it to the top of the list.

This is a useful point to review whether the amount you’re putting towards retirement still reflects your circumstances. If your earnings have increased substantially since you first began saving, are your pension arrangements still appropriate for the lifestyle you’re hoping to have later?

A pension contribution that felt significant early in your career might look very different ten or fifteen years later. Rather than setting your retirement plans once and forgetting about them, consider reviewing them whenever your career or income changes significantly.

Becoming a practice owner

Buying a dental practice can be one of the biggest financial milestones of your career. Understandably, your focus may shift towards the business. This might include meeting loan repayments, investing in equipment, managing staff and building the value of the practice.

But becoming a business owner can also be a good time to revisit your personal retirement strategy.

Some practice owners may view the eventual sale of their business as an important part of their retirement plan. While that may prove valuable, it’s worth considering your practice alongside your other retirement assets rather than relying on its future sale in isolation.

How much might you need from the business to fund your retirement? When would you ideally like to sell? And what happens if the eventual value or timing of the sale is different from what you expect?

Building pension provision alongside your business can help create a more rounded retirement plan.

Moving from NHS to private

For dentists moving towards private practice, pensions deserve particular attention. If you reduce the amount of NHS work you carry out, or move fully into private dentistry, this can change how you build future benefits in the NHS Pension Scheme.

The benefits you’ve already earned don’t simply disappear if you leave active membership. However, if you’re no longer contributing, you won’t continue building benefits in the same way. That makes an NHS-to-private transition an important point for a pension review.

You may need to consider whether additional retirement provision could help replace some of the benefits you would otherwise have continued to build through NHS work.

It’s also important to look beyond retirement income itself. Membership of the NHS Pension Scheme can provide other benefits, so understanding what changes when your working arrangements shift can help you make informed decisions.

Turning the focus from saving to planning

As retirement moves from a distant ambition to something on the horizon, your pension planning may need to become more detailed. Rather than simply asking how much you’ve accumulated, you can start considering how your various sources of retirement income will work together.

For example, you might have NHS pension benefits, personal pensions, savings, investments, the State Pension and proceeds from selling a practice. Where can you access each of them? How much income might they provide? And will they be enough to support the retirement you have in mind?

This can also be the point at which your original retirement plans change. Perhaps you once expected to work until your normal retirement age but would now like to finish earlier. Alternatively, you might prefer a gradual transition, reducing your clinical commitments while continuing to work in some capacity.

Understanding the financial implications of these choices can help you decide what’s achievable.

Think about how you’ll take your benefits

Eventually, the question changes from ‘Am I saving enough?’ to ‘How am I going to use what I’ve built?’. There can be several decisions to make as you approach retirement, particularly if you’ve accumulated different pensions and other assets over the course of your career.

You may need to consider when to take NHS pension benefits, how to use personal pension savings and whether taking benefits at different times could support a phased move away from dentistry. If you’re a practice owner, you’ll also need to think about your exit from the business.

Thinking about these decisions can help you build an income strategy around the retirement you actually want, rather than simply accessing each pot or pension as it becomes available.

Make every pension decision count

You wouldn’t expect the career plan you had as a newly qualified dentist to remain unchanged for your entire working life. Your pension planning deserves the same flexibility. If it’s been a while since you last reviewed your pension arrangement, ask yourself the following questions:

• Have your earnings increased?
• Have you bought a practice?
• Changed the balance of NHS and private work?
• Started a family?
• Altered the age at which you’d like to retire?

If your career has moved on but your pension planning hasn’t, it might be time for a financial check-up. Offering expert guidance tailored to dentists, a Specialist Financial Adviser from Wesleyan Financial Services can review your retirement plans in the context of your career.

Because keeping your pension on track isn’t just about planning for retirement once. It’s about making sure your plans continue to work for you at every stage.

Please note: Charges may apply. You will not be charged until you have agreed to the services you require and the associated costs. Learn more at www.wesleyan.co.uk/charges.

Wesleyan Financial Services Ltd (Registered in England and Wales No. 1651212) is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered Office: Colmore Circus, Birmingham B4 6AR. Telephone: 0345 351 2352. Calls may be recorded to help us provide, monitor and improve our services to you. VAT number 487282114.

This article is sponsored by Wesleyan