Marabese

Pensions or poverty

In a new BBC survey published in May, only 50% of all people between the ages of 20 and 60 are not putting aside any money for their pension, perhaps it is more surprising then that the other half are.
For the under 30s the proportion rises to 66%, while 41-60 year olds the number of non-savers is still up at 45%.
Unfortunately, for most of us, non-pension saving is not an option.

People are still too busy spending judging from retail figure released over the last 6 months – Some people will still keep spending the cash when they have it.
We don’t trust the financial services industry anymore or their employees. Eg. the collapse of Equitable Life, mis-selling of mortgage endowments.

Nor do people have the cash to invest
We rarely have spare cash. I was quite astonished that a work colleague of mine and his partner (both of whom earn over £30,000 and are in their early thirties) do not have any saving at all, or even a mortgage! The cost of ever increasing food, electricity, multiple phones, broadband, contents insurance, rent/mortgage is too much. Houses can still only be bought by only the wealthiest family's, and unless your an MP our wages aren't increasing by very much.

For those who can save, whilst their are some good fund managers of pensions and other funds out there, there seem to be a lot more truly awful ones (either them or guidance by their superiors). You would think that these fund managers are aware of what is happening at companies on a daily basis they can make some sort of increase in the funds they manage. Or else how do they justify an annual fee.

The only alternative is to save up ourselves (squirreling it away like Silas Marner did) and invest in assets that the individual thinks will do well over the long term, though when it comes to shares we are almost taking a gamble when choosing which to buy.

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Marabese