Drum: ENTERPRISE
41
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word
pensions? Old people? Then you probably don’t need to be reading
this article. But if you expect to be sipping Martinis in the mountains
of Spain by the time you’re in your 50s, read on. Jon Hill explains.
eaders of the D aily M ail may have been
alarmed by recent research from London’s
Cass Business School, suggesting that up
to 10 million immigrants might be needed in Britain
by 2025 to ensure that the Government is able to
continue providing the basic state pension of £80 a
week. Given that – judging by their headlines – the
‘pensions crisis’ and ‘asylum madness’ are two of
the average Mail-reader’s three most pressing
concerns, all it would take would be to prove that
lenient treatment of paedophiles could somehow
boost pension funds to send their collective brains
into complete meltdown.
R
But, easy to joke about as it may be – especially for
the smart-arsed, live-forever under-30s generation –
the ‘pensions crisis’ is real, and as pressing an issue
as any the country faces today. In a major report on
pensions, commissioned by the Government and
released in October 2004, Adair Turner estimated
that one in five Britons was not saving enough for
retirement. Of those, 60% are not paying into any
kind of pension fund.
Despite what the experts tell us, it is hard for the
so-called ‘younger generation’ to get themselves
interested in the idea of pensions. Not only is it
years down the line, but many of us still entertain
the vague notion that we will somehow stumble
into money as our lives progress, meaning that we
will be sipping Martinis in the Cayman Islands by
the time we are 55, with nothing so mundane as
pensions to trouble us. Pensions make you think
of pension books, make you think of long, snaking
Post Office queues at lunchtime, make you think of
ageing, make you think of mortality. No thank you…
What we don’t realise – will never realise until we
reach that age – is that pensions are much more
than that. The reason it is so easy to be dismissive
of pensions is that we have always taken them for
granted. They are a promise made by the Government
to the people: the promise that the State would
make allowances for your old age, would look after
its most vulnerable – most deserving – citizens
when they reach the end of their working lives,
and have earned their rest. The promise that, after »
Tomorrow?
The Hole in Your Retirement Plan