Taking Retirement Seriously
Posted on December 6, 2011 by admin
It’s old news now that many people in retirement are struggling with debts, and pensioners may be rich in assets but have low incomes. So knowing all this, as a nation are we taking this on board and planning so that we don’t have the same troubles when we reach retirement age?
It would seem that we’re not!
The annual Financial Planning Survey which is commissioned by the Institute of Financial Planning (IFP) shows that the general public just aren’t doing very much. They’ve organised another ‘Financial Planning Week’ – this is the fourth year they’ve done so – to help raise awareness and talk about the importance of good financial planning.
A recent poll shows, that despite concerns over future standards of living in retirement, many people still aren’t doing anything to change this for themselves. They’re not putting money into pension plans or trying to improve the situation, and just 41% of people asked said that they would consider making additional contributions to their pensions in order to be able to retire at 60 instead of the increased state retirement ages that are being brought in.
So how come, if we know how important it is for our future, we’re not doing anything about it?
It seems we know that it’s important – 47% of us don’t believe we’ve saved enough to live comfortably in retirement – but at the moment a large proportion of the public just don’t have any spare cash to put away for their future. Instead, they’re concentrating on paying debts or coping with every-day living expenses. A rather large 14% haven’t made any pension contributions at all.
So what will the future hold?
With retirement creeping closer for us all, and more and more people being basically unprepared for it, it seems that many of us will need to continue working as retiring will just be unviable for us financially. One of the most worrying figures recently shows that 12.5% of people over 55 think that they will never be able to retire because of their poor finances. For some equity release will be an alternative, but for those who own no property or who will still have outstanding mortgages this will be cold comfort.
One positive change comes in, in 2012. Companies will be forced to enrol their staff into private pension schemes. This is being done in a bid to make sure that we all save more, and will mean that instead of choosing to opt in, we will have to choose to opt out instead.
Even if you have debt and are struggling to pay it off, you are actually entitled to count money that you pay towards a pension before money that’s calculated for minimum payments on debts! So take some action now to improve your future financial security and start paying into a pension plan now.
