The planning decisions that protect your retirement income — and the mistakes that quietly erode it.
Most people spend more time planning a holiday than structuring their retirement income. That’s not because they don’t care — it’s because the decisions are complex, the stakes feel abstract, and the industry isn’t always helpful.
How much can you safely draw each year without running out? Living annuity, life annuity, or both? What does a 1% fee difference actually cost you over 25 years? How do you protect your income if markets fall in your first few years of retirement?
We wrote this guide to answer those questions plainly — with real numbers, honest trade-offs, and no product pitch.
Nine chapters across the full retirement planning landscape — from the first decisions you’ll face to the risks that compound quietly over decades.
Chapter 1
What to think about before you stop earning — and the decisions that get harder to fix later.
Chapter 2
How to structure your income and withdrawals to keep more of what’s yours.
Chapter 3
Where your money comes from, how it’s structured, and what the commutation decision really means.
Chapter 4
How it works, what the drawdown range means in practice, and when it’s the right (and wrong) choice.
Chapter 5
The trade-offs of guaranteed income — certainty vs flexibility, and what happens when you die.
Chapter 6
Why your investment strategy at retirement is fundamentally different from the one that got you here.
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Sequence risk, inflation, longevity, and behavioural mistakes — the threats that don’t show up in a portfolio statement.
Chapter 9
What you’re actually paying, what you should be paying, and how to tell the difference
This guide is written for people who are approaching retirement, recently retired, or a few years in and questioning whether their current plan is still fit for purpose.
It assumes you have meaningful retirement capital to manage — typically R3 million or more — and that you’d rather understand the decisions yourself than rely on someone else’s summary.
If you’re looking for a product recommendation or a shortcut, this isn’t it. If you want a clear-eyed look at how retirement income actually works in South Africa — the maths, the trade-offs, and the things most advisors don’t explain — it’s worth your time.
The guide is free, and there’s no sales call attached to the download. You’ll receive the PDF immediately, followed by five short emails over the next two weeks that build on the guide’s key themes.
Written by Carl-Peter Lehmann and Steven Hall — CFP® professionals and co-founders of Henceforward, a fee-only wealth management firm based in South Africa.
By downloading, you’ll receive a short email series with insights from the guide. Unsubscribe anytime.
Henceforward is an independent, fee-only wealth management firm. We charge a flat annual fee for advice — no commissions, no percentage of assets, no product incentives. That means the only thing influencing our recommendations is what’s right for you.
We work with professionals, entrepreneurs, retirees, and families managing meaningful wealth — typically from R3 million to R250 million and above. Our advice covers investments, retirement planning, tax strategy, estate planning, and offshore structuring.
Carl-Peter Lehmann, CFP® and Steven Hall, CFP® founded Henceforward to offer the kind of advice they’d want for their own families: thorough, transparent, and genuinely independent.
Learn more about how we work →
Have questions about your investments or financial plan? We’re happy to talk it through — no obligation, no pitch.
Our Retirement Insights guide models the real income difference between living and life annuities at different capital levels — including the hybrid approach most advisors don’t mention. Download it free →
Our Retirement Insights guide covers nine chapters on income planning, annuity decisions, investment strategy, fees, and risks — written for people who’d rather understand the numbers than take someone’s word for it.
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