If you’ve not read the latest Institute of Directors report, Roadmap to Retirement Reform 2009, I’d recommend it. Much is a repetition of what we’ve heard over the last couple of years from similar reports. However, there is some new content and it does serve as a good reminder of the problems we face in engaging sensible and affordable retirement planning.
If time is short, read pages 14 and 15 where Malcolm Small, the report’s author, succinctly outlines why pension planning is ‘unfashionable’, finishing with his comment:
“However, employers are only one side of this particular coin. Employees need to be committed to pension saving, too, and all the evidence from the ACCA research referred to above, and from The Pensions Reports 2006 and 2007, is that they are, in many cases, not so committed. At the end of the day, if employees don’t demand a pension plan, or don’t value it, the employer is unlikely to offer one in a voluntary environment, and there may be strong implications for the success, or otherwise, of auto enrolment when it happens.”
Personally, I think it's more complicated than that. A member of the public used this comment on a forum about pensions being compicated: "... the fear of a lack of financial comfort in our older age is so linked to the actual fear of older age that it's really no wonder that many prefer to ignore it!"
I think that quote speaks volumes, don't you? See:
(72 pages)