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Ask the central question - Have I saved enough?

"What is similar about saving for retirement in your 20s, planning your savings for retirement in your 50s and managing your savings once retired?

The income that these investments produce," answers Mike Ronald (Pictured right), an investment professional at Marriott Asset Management.

People often approach savings differently at different times over their savings lifetimes. While this may be appropriate, it may lead to these various savings elements being unrelated to each other which remove an element of certainty from the savings plan.

It can also make it harder to answer the often-asked question: "Am I saving enough or will my savings be sufficient to live off when I retire?"

It becomes challenging to understand whether a person's rate of savings in their 20s and 30s will be enough to sustain them when an entirely different approach to savings is made once that person is retired and is now living off their savings.

An Income Focussed Investment Approach may offer the ability to answer this all-important question and provide a unifying approach that an investor could use throughout their savings lifespan.

The ability of an investment to produce a reliable and predictable income is the core of an Income Focussed Investment Approach.

It can be used not only to assist in making investment decisions; it can also, with a high degree of reliability, provide an investor with an estimate of the level of income their investments will produce now and into the future.

Why is it important to know the level of income that an investment produces?

If a person is ultimately to live off their savings once they are retired, and these savings are to sustain them over their retired life, then the income that these savings can generate is of critical importance: it is this income which must be utilised to sustain them in retirement.

If an investor is to keep their capital intact over this period, the amount that they should draw from their savings should be limited to the income produced and hence prevent the capital portion of their savings from being eroded.

And if the investments are well managed, the income produced should grow at a predetermined rate over time.

This philosophy is not only valuable to a retired investor, but it can also assist 20-year-olds in understanding the level of income that their savings can produce now and give an indication of what they might produce when they retire.

A simple arithmetic projection will enable the investor to look forward with some degree of certainty as to the levels of income they might enjoy in 30 years' time.

This is only possible, though, if their savings are invested in companies and bonds that provide a high degree of income reliability.

Marriott uses an Income Focussed Investment Approach and has specialised in assisting investors by providing savings products that produce income streams with high degrees of certainty and with an idea the extent to which the income can grow.

In this way, Marriott assists those saving for retirement as well as those who have already retired in answering the central question: have I saved enough?