70 is the new 68

Lord Turner just 4 years ago shocked the nation when he published his report into the state of the UK’s pensions system.

Well I’m actually a bit of a fan of Lord Turners, but it just goes to show that a little Hero worship is a dangerous thing!

For no sooner than he releases it, than this week he announced that he got his sums wrong and that my expected retirement age of 68 is just too much of an aspiration. No for me I must head back to the marketing salt mines for another two years until I’m the ripe old age of 70.

What for me, is the crux of this story is that, on the plus side we are seeing a continual improvement to life expectancy this positive spin is however challenging the retirement income market to almost breaking point.

On an almost on a daily basis we’re told that the funding of retirement will continue to be a major concern for future governments and generations alike. Recently to give some scale to this issue a phrase has been bandied around that means that you should stop worrying about the ‘Credit Crunch’ and start to worry about the ‘Demographic Crunch’.

There was a great article by Dominic Lawson in this weekends Sunday Times that outlined the issues and scale of the problem well.

Anyway I’m off back to the salt mines and will be scrubbing Lord Turner from my Christmas Card list upon the way.

David Mccann
Group Planning Director