Be glad you are not retiring today

Be glad you are not retiring today

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    How are the pension funds going to cope?

Just trying to think through the consequences of the massive global crash that we have seen in the past few days is awesome.

One group of many that come immediately to mind, as several remarked on the previous thread, are those for whom today marks the end of their working life and the start of their pension. For thirty or forty years they will have been ploughing money into their pension pot so that on the day of their retirement they can purchase an annuity which will then form their basic income for the rest of their lives.

The actual income level that they will get will be substantially smaller than if they had left last week or before the start of the summer. A planned retirement that could have been relatively comfortable could now be very grim indeed.

And what about the pension funds? What about those who thought they were going to get a defined benefit based on their final earnings? With the massive collapse in fund values it’s going to be very hard seeing how those can go on.

What’s going to be the political impact? Who will get the blame? It’s all very hard to call.

Welcome to a very difficult new grey world.

Mike Smithson

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