British Pension Survey aims to uncover the truth about our pensions

by John Fitzsimons on 03 July 2012  |  8 comments
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A new survey is asking us what we think we will need in retirement and seeing how it compares to the reality.

Two weeks ago, the British Pension Survey was launched. It’s an interesting project, a poll of Brits of all ages trying to discover exactly what we are doing to prepare for the financial realities of life after work. And it’s already uncovered some results which the organisers have described as “surprising and alarming”.

Those are words that have become all too common when talking about pensions. It’s not exactly an area of finance that has been swamped with good news. One in five has no pension savings, employers are offering cash bribes in order to get their employees to leave decent final salary pensions for substandard replacements, annuity rates have reached yet another record low... the list goes on.

Is it any wonder that UK pensions were recently described as being among the worst in the developed world?

One of the big problems is that there is a big gap between what people expect their retirement to look like – and more importantly, cost – and the reality.

I’ve taken the survey myself. It only took a couple of minutes, but has already made me think seriously about how much I’m saving for retirement – not enough – and what I’m going to need to do in order to pay for a decent quality of life once my working days are done. It’s still open for you to take part.

The more people that take part in the survey, the more accurate the results will be. Those results will then be sent on to relevant Government departments and financial firms, with the survey taking place on an annual basis so that changes can be tracked.

We’ll be covering the results, so it would be good for as many of you to take part as possible, whether young or old, rich or poor. And let me know what you think of the survey, and the general state of pensions, in the Comment box below.

Take the British Pension Survey

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