General Chat

You started it!! A couple years ago my hubby was paying just under 46 pds a week NH, one day he crushed his hand in a machine at work, we were "allocated" 34.88 pds a week!!! Endownments! Took out an endownment mortgage, as everyone was advised to in 1987! legislation (spelling is probably wrong) came out 1988, so can't fight it!!! Pension! Hubby pays in over 200 pds a month and forcast says............. £170 a month when he is 65, wow!!!! Shares! Invested & Lost!!!!!!! House!!!!! Bricks & Mortar are worth zilch!!! Do I go on? Sorry to moan but we have tried over the years to make our lives easy, comfortable, in the future and what for??

The government wants us all to invest in personal pensions to save themselves the embarrassment of admitting there's not enough in the pot to pay everyone a state pension. I have worked for over 40 years, even bringing up a family I did part time jobs. I have asked for a pension forecast from the Min of Pensions or whatever they call themselves and I am entitled to the princely sum of £11.45 per week. This is because I paid "Married Woman's Stamp" for years, paying only in my own right after my husband of 25 years decided he wanted something a bit younger than me. Because he has remarried, I am not entitled to any of his Graduated Pension. Tough luck me! If I had my time over again, I wouldnt buy a pension but I'd certainly invest, either in property or Gold, knowing what I know now.

My husband was made redundant and with the advice of a financial advisor who said that the former Company's pension fund could not grow, he transferred his pension to a 'personal pension' - what a big mistake. He has been fighting now for over six years as being 'mis-sold'. The Financial Ombudsman' agrees but the FA sold his business and ceased trading so it goes to another department and so on and so on. Its no wonder people don't invest - company pensions are fine - personal pensions have so many loop-holes - you can see the reasoning behind investing in property.

Clare I agree with everything you say, glad you wrote it all out and not me.

Wendy, to be honest it's all worked out ok, my wife worked for BP, we put as much as we could into their final earnings scheme and that has paid off rather well, plus we have a lot of other investments which have paid the mortgage a long time ago and now give us a good income. But if we had just paid into money purchase pensions as the Government advises we'd be stuffed!

So Bob, what about the future? Who can guarantee the value of investments and the returns when you draw on them? I invested for a total of 23 years, the wisdom is that over a period of time things even out - but they don't! I think the Government is being over optimistic in suggesting that if young people take out pensions they will have a secure old age. The only people who get rich from that are the financial consultants! Sorry, you aren't one are you?

Andy Basically if a young person now doesn't invest in a pension then they will be very poor in their old age. The fact that you (and many others) were caught by the double whammy of poor investment returnd and low annuity yields does not mean that it was a bad investment - just not as good as you were led to believe.

A bit of a personal rant this. I cannot understand why the government insists that everyone should take out a pension plan for their old age. I did this at the age of 34, I'm now 57. I paid in the maximum amount I could percentage wise for every year I worked. Now I have chosen to take early retirement, I find that rather than the quarter million pounds the projections promised me there is a piddling £74,000 in there. Of this 74,000 there is only 47,000 I can access at the moment, the rest has to wait until I'm 60. This £47,000, rather than buy me the Grand pension of £15,000 a year which I was promised will buy me £3000 a year, or if I take a lump sum of £8,800 a pension of £2400 a year! Now the government cannot guarantee returns on investments, cannot control the greed of insurance companies and investment consultants. And cannot guarantee what annuities will be in 25 years time! Why the hell should anyone invested a pension?