General Chat

that's what we should all be doing.with that i mean private company pensions.the goverment has predicted that people who save too little money through there company pensions or people who don't have a pension are putting an added burden on the taxpayer.i think that company pensions should be compulsary.not only will this effect the taxpayers now.the tax payers of the future will have to foot the bill of people who have not saved for their future.what do you think?xxxx(:

Lisa - I think part of the problem now is that many people have little confidence in company pension schemes as so many have proved inadequate. My husband worked for a company for 15 years and this pension is now worth diddly-squat!

Hi Lisa, My husband has worked for the same firm for 41 years and not only contributed to the company pension scheme but also paid additional voluntary contributions in the belief that he was providing for his old age in the form of a decent pension. Now there's a big black hole where his pension fund should be. He did what he thought best at the time along with millions of other employees whose company pension schemes were with the big insurance companies. Now here he is, aged 56, with no time to make up the devastating damage to his pension caused by these insurance companies either going belly up or realising at this late stage that, although they have had people's money, there are insufficient funds to meet pension payments. So I am not surprised that people are thinking twice about trusting insurance companies with their hard earned cash in the hope that they will provide a decent pension. Who's to say that when they reach retirement age the money will be there? Or for that matter the insurance company! Magsx

i wud luv to earn enough money to either save or have a pension but i earn minimum wage.....................barely have enough to live on let alone anything else lou

maz that's a different matter.they cannot work so deserve a state pension.my argument is that there are too many people not taking them out.it should be stated that pensions are worth taking out.and that includes the goverment bringing in a law to stop companies changing their pensions when they feel like itxxxx(:

I don't have any confidence in pension schemes, private or otherwise. There have been so many cases where people have paid in for years only to have nothing at the end due to no fault of their own- they would have been better off putting the money in a savings account- which is exactly what I am doing until finally a government comes along which is committed to sorting out the pensions fiasco.

Lisa - many companies were forced into changing their pension schemes when Equitable Life went under. The only difference in essence between a company pension plan and a personal pension plan is that the company acts as a 'middle man' and often matches or betters your contribution, adds it, and takes out a plan with an insurance company on your behalf. Many Personal Pension Plans were wrecked too and thousands of people face a retirement of relative poverty when they believed they had adequately provided for it. The State Retirement pension fund is suffering too - that is what all the fuss is about. When you make a National Insurance Contribution, the initial contribution made on whatever the Lower Earnings Level is for the year (the point at which you start to pay National Insurance) goes towards the basic State Retirement Pension. Any contribution over that used to be called Serps. If you did not contribute to a Contracted Out Pension Scheme (i.e. made contracted out contributions on your salary and paid into an accepted company pension scheme instead) then this part of your contribution would form the basis on which any Additional State Retirement Pension was calculated and added to your basic State Retirement Pension. If you were on a low wage then very little if anything at all would be paid into either fund, Serps or otherwise. What the Government is saying is that there are insufficient funds in their coffers to meet the bill for these additional pensions without huge tax rises. The Minimum Income Guarantee has not helped their pension bill either but it is no more than a pensioner has a right to expect. Many women relied on their husband's pension to provide for them at a time when very few women worked and earned a pension for themselves and it is meant as a safety net for those on low income too. Magsx

What I always find so amazing when the Govt begin bleeting yet again about pension provision is 'where do they think we have been all of these years' tHEY KNEW WE WERE COMING AND SUCCESSIVE GOVTS. HAVE DONE NOTHING. At the same time they open our doors to all and sundry to come in and enjoy our overburdened ,Welfare State. How can they expect young people who are already strapped by our expensive economy to make the size of savings necessary for private pension provision. Most young people who are lucky enough to have a home of their own are spending most of their hard earned money on keeping the roof over theri heads. We do not have a culture where saving is rewarded,look at the abysmal interest rates,they are an insult. The young are encouraged to borrow for everything. They have been duped into this way of thinking by our materialistic society and by the big finance houses who can't wait to get you hooked. Yes there will need to be a complete overhaul of attitudes. Sooner or later the bubble of borrowing will burst. Credit is the norm for our society. The young are drawn further into debt and ensnared by finance houses who don't give a jot for them. When I was young,you saved for what you wanted and if you had n't the money you went without. Our youngsters have been brought up in HAVES culture which has been driven by the unscrupulous business interests. The Govt. should be looking at controls of these institutions We need insentive schemes for the young to save for their futures. Sadly it is too late for me I am struggling on a disgusting pension which is as a direct result of the Thatcherite encouragement for business to drop their responsibility to their employees. In my own case it was made possible for my contract hours to be reduced to part time so that the employer had no longer to pay superannuation for me. There are thousands of us who retired out on the final salary debacle which had been reduced to half of the expected amount. Rose

The present Government can't avoid taking at least some of the blame for this fiasco. When in opposition they made political capital out of a small number of failures e.g. Maxwell, and diminished confidence in company schemes even though the vast majority were doing well for their members. In 1997 they said that pension funds were awash with money, being used as tax breaks by companies so they took away tax relief of £5 billion pounds per annum. Companies have largely made up the difference, thereby reducing profits and pegging back share prices (the Footsie stock market index is hardly changed over the last 7 years) and thus pegging growth in the assets held by the pension funds, therefore reducing pensioners benefits. The relentless march of means-tested benefits under Gordon Brown means that if you are on a low income it's pointless to save for a private pension as you will get no more than relying on the State. Meanwhile public sector pensions have carried on as final salary schemes and the number of public sector workers has increased by half a million, resulting in higher taxes which makes it more difficult to save. Vicious circle, really.