In yesterday’s column we touched upon the large numbers of people turning 65 over the coming 2 years, and their emerging realisation that they could well be hard up in old age, having failed to salt away enough cash in their pensions.
These were the children of the baby boomer generation, whose experiences of the good years of the 80s appears not to have filtered through to their pensions pots.
Today we find the following alarming facts about the level of understanding of pensions planning, among the children of the 40s and the 50s.
- 2 in 10 baby boomers do not know how much income they will need when they retire
- 3 in 10 know little to nothing about their pensions saving arrangements
- 4 in 10 have no clue how much a £100,000 pension pot would pay out in pension income
- only 3 in 10 believe they are properly prepared for retirement
- and despite all the above – 9 in 10 do not believe the basic state pension is enough to live on.
It appears that we have an epidemic of future-blindness that is preventing us from seeing far enough ahead to sit down with our financial adviser, and do some meaningful pensions planning.
