Retirement is meant to be a time of relaxation after years of hard work. However, many people find that they may need to continue to work well past retirement age, or that their days of relaxation are actually more stressful than anticipated. To avoid this, the Money Towers team have come up with a list of the 10 most common retirement mistakes so that you can avoid them when planning for your future, and you get the retirement that you deserve.

1. Not planning early enough
Contrary to popular belief, you are never too young to start saving money for your retirement. The sooner you start putting money aside, the more time it has to accumulate interest. And interest gains interest, so the earlier your money is in, the more compounded interest you will receive on your money.

2. Planning Alone
Most people would do well to consult a professional about their retirement plans. Even if you feel you have a sound retirement plan, it can be helpful to bounce your ideas off a professional who can help you tweak your plan, or advice you on areas you could improve in.

3. Poor Asset Allocation
It is not advisable to put all your funds into one asset, or to put all your money into high risk ventures. If you invest in one company and it goes bankrupt, you could be left with nothing, so hedge your bets and invest in a variety of companies and industries.

4. Not keeping an eye on your Investments
It is important to keep an eye on your investments to ensure they are staying health. Verify the status of your money on a regular basis – if you find lots of your investments aren’t too healthy, consider diversifying to try and keep the value of your investments as high as possible.

5. Not using your Tax Free Allowance
Everyone should use their ISA allowance each year if possible. The interest charged on tax free savings is not taxed, therefore you are saving even more money! Shop around, as you can swap your ISAs between providers, and you can hold ISAs with more than one provider, although you can open one ISA per year.

6. Dipping in to your retirement fund
You should never dip into your retirement fund unless it is an absolute emergency. The money in your retirement options should remain there and should not be treated as ‘rainy day’ money or spare cash.

7. Not planning your lifestyle
You need to know exactly what sort of lifestyle you are aiming for in retirement and how much this will cost you. Try to plan what expenses you expect to have, and what sort of ‘spare cash’ you would like to have. After all, how will you know how much you need to save if you don’t know how much you are planning to spend?

8. Relying on the state
State pensions are unlikely to keep you afloat therefore you need alternatives to the state pension in order to boost your retirement funds.

9. Ignoring Inflation
Inflation will continue, whether you are working or not. You will need to take inflation into account when looking at your funds to ensure you have enough money.

10. Not factoring in death
This doesn’t affect you, but it may affect your spouse or dependents. If you die, will your loved ones have enough money to survive on comfortably? Ensure that if you are in a partnership or you have dependents that you have planned sufficiently for if the worst happens.

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