The Campervan Cruisers

We see a lot of clients who want to spend more time away from home, many of whom want to do so in a campervan or caravan. The freedom of the open road clearly calls most powerfully…

A couple who we first met maybe three years ago, both around the 60 mark, had similar aspirations, but no idea as to whether these aspirations were (or would ever be) in reach. We’ll call them Jane and Freddie, for illustrative purposes only. More specifically, Jane and Freddie were looking to finance a static caravan in Wales, having enjoyed the area on many occasions throughout their lives.

Jane and Freddie had amassed a huge pile of paperwork from various pension providers over the years. However, they thought it didn’t add up to much and didn’t realise that they could access some of the funds in the short-term. Their plan was therefore to wait for the better part of a decade until they could claim their State Pension, then cross their fingers and hope that the static caravan dream would be within their means. Worst case, they’d rent a hatchback for ad hoc getaways.

Somewhat surprisingly (given their despondency), buried amongst the paperwork we found significant pension pots, including – crucially - a final-salary pension that was due to mature as soon as Freddie reached 65. However, given Freddie’s current age, we concluded that he could convert this into a personal pension pot, and access the funds now to purchase the caravan (without needing to start taking his income).

When looking at the final salary pension figures, Freddie had always assumed that the value included as part of the illustration was the total value of the pot. However, the pot value was 30-times that! The paperwork actually showed an annual income amount. You could almost hear the thump as his jaw hit the floor.

Now, Freddie really enjoyed his job, but Jane wasn’t so keen on hers, yet both suddenly found themselves in a position where they could stop work immediately…if they wanted to. Or continue to work, but on their own terms. Part-time? Why not. To achieve this, we helped them to clear their mortgage to reduce their outgoings, which meant that they were no longer reliant on Jane’s income.

Jane quit almost immediately, and hasn’t looked back since. She’s living a stress-free live and focusing on all the hobbies she had deprioritised over the past couple of decades. In other words, she’s nailing it (as you can probably tell, we love it when our clients keep in touch!). Taking a slightly different approach – safe in the knowledge that he could start drawing an income from his pension to supplement his salary - Freddie reduced his working commitments to three days a week. He’s loving life.

So, in summary, our work with Jane and Freddie has enabled them to pay off the mortgage and other small debts, more than cover Jane’s loss of salary and Freddie’s reduction in salary, buy that static caravan and start spending more long weekends relaxing in the pristine Welsh countryside. As an added bonus, they had enough capital left over to extend their primary residence, and are due to commence building work over the coming months.

Jane and Freddie are better off now than ever before and there would have been little difference had they worked for another 5 or 6 years. Oh, and we have to say, their new static caravan is beautiful!