Retirement (or Last of the Summer Wine)

Hi all The word that comes to mind is "Prevaricate". When Vince Cable was making his speech, where he was applauding the great performance of the coalition government, he told the interviewer in such a way, I believe, that most people thought that it was a universal state pension for every one, which is what he intended them to believe. There is a thumb rule in business that states that the big print tells what you get & the small print what you can't. Vince Cable capitalised on that with what he said. As if to add insult to injury, many of Vince Cable's speech You-tube recordings have been disabled. Nothing like hiding the truth when they need to. Some of our politicians are really good at that until they get dragged screaming into the courts.

Yes Philip you're so right, after all Vince Cable did work for America, I always check out the backgrounds and where they came from in family and previous jobs who they back in the world of those that rule us.

Hi all Hardly a day goes by without me seeing tele' adverts for someone to help you manage your pension or pension pot. I have just seen such an advert now. There are few other subjects where ignorance is bliss, more so than personal finance. This is a state of affairs throughout all age groups in our society. All groups are vulnerable to bad advice, but it is the older age group that are currently being targeted. The complexities of pensions almost needs a solicitors clerk to decipher to start with, leave alone a marketer telling you to cash or move your funds. Remember, just a couple of decades ago where every bod in a suit was telling you to cancel your payback mortgage & take out a wonderful performing tied endowment. Then think back to a decade ago where those who had switched to endowments, suddenly found that instead of wonderfully preforming endowments, they were failing, so much so that at one point 40% of endowments were not worth the paper they were written on. The suited bods who had sold them were then laughing all the way to their banks with the high commissions from the failed endowments. Please be aware that the same suited bods are still out there, looking for their killing on this as they see it as an easy pushover. Maybe not knocking on your door as they did, or working from a short lease office. They now work on the internet, right into your home. I am not saying that there is not good advice about, as there is. In the past your local bank manager was usually a reliable source of good info, but since the legislation for separating bank investment from retail banking, expertise may not be quite as hot as it was at one time, but your bank manager might be the best place to start an enquiry. The main high street banks do have pensions experts. Just know that if someone entices you to cash a pension early, unless it is invested well, you won't have it when you do need it. That is a fact that no one should talk you around. A quart will not fit into a pint pot, ever.

Hi PhilipinCoventry. The problem is high street banks can only sell their own products. Their 'pension experts' are in reality salesmen whose job is to promote and sell that particular bank's products. A few years ago I was looking to invest a considerable amount of money. Popped into Lloyds, my bank, to talk to an 'advisor'. Naturally after finding out my attitude to risk he came up with several unit trust funds (Scottish Widows). Everyone of them had performed dismally compared to all the others in their particular sectors and well below the average return. When I pointed this out to him he got quite upset and said his clients were satisfied. I remarked that they wouldn't be if they did some research and checked performance tables as to how they had underperformed. I've been using a firm in Bristol called Hargreaves Lansdown for years. Can't fault them.

Hi Wimero & thank you for your post In one sense, when the clearing banks were in investment competition with each other, it was always possible for bias info to be given, for their own ends. Scottish Widows for example, I suggested to a Lloyds manager that the widows would be better selling their business outside on the bank steps, for their poor financial performance, whilst Royal London & the Co-op as examples were motoring well & outperforming Scottish Widows. How fortunes have change lately though. Any investment can always be a risk. The situation that I was harping back to was more to do with hard-sell over commissioned sales. If we all knew or if you & I knew how the stock & commodity market was going to perform, we could both be living in the Seychelles, hey!

Evening PhilipinCoventry. I agree you will never second guess the market. All investments in stocks and commodities are a risk, some more than others. That's why the old adage applies, the greater potential risk the greater the potential return (or loss). The hard sell was and still is around. Wish I did know how how the market would fare in the future. Despite all the 'experts' offering informative predictions nobody knows.

This new thing of government saying now of taking your pensions out to do with how you want. Beware on radio the other week a man was saying these pension companies will charge you for taking so much out only if you take out like £150.00 they wont charge you.

I regard myself as retired although I'm only 55 and I don't get a pension. I will get a small pension from Dunlop when I'm 65 but I think it will only be 8% of my final year salary there. In my case I wanted to retire early due to having a bad back. I moved to northern Scotland in 1997 and started my own business, repairing washing machines and other appliances. As you all know, washing machines are heavy items to shift about all day, so the work took its toll on my back. I could not get the GPs to take the problem seriously as they get so many non genuine complaints about backache. I lost both my parents within a 3 year period so inherited some money when their house in Nuneaton was sold. I would not have moved abroad when they were alive but decided I had nothing much to lose. The plan was to rent out my cottage in Scotland and live off that rental income in a country where the cost of living is lower. This is kind of what happened and I moved to a sort of smallholding in a village in Hungary. The renting out of the house has not been an unqualified success as I've not had good tenants and there have been long periods when the house was empty. My second tenant ended up being sent to prison for 14 years! The cottage is next door to a hotel and is currently rented by the hotel to accommodate live-in members of staff. I said I regard myself as retired but I am kept pretty busy with the house, outbuildings and land. I bought a place that needed work so a lot of my time is spent doing building renovation. There is also about 1.5 acres of land, mostly planted with Christmas trees. One thing I was not aware of when I bought it was a law in Hungary regarding control of a plant called ragweed. I am supposed to cut down all the grass and weeds at least twice a year and can be fined if ragweed in flower is found on my land. I use a Honda strimmer for this job but can only manage to do about an hour a day so it takes me about 6 weeks to cut all the grass. I am moving again, this time just over the border into Croatia. I have bought a similar property there but it has less land and in any case there is no ragweed law in Croatia. I do have long term plans to have my own microbrewery and I want to grow my own ingredients. I am a real ale fan so although beer is only about 50p a can here, it is not to my taste. I don't have any plans to sell beer but I might be able to do swaps for wine, fruit, veg etc produced by my neighbours. The last time I went for a pint in a UK pub it cost £3.50 so I would not be drinking it even if I had access to proper English beer.

I'm just back home after watching 'Madness' perform last night in Montrose. Tomorrow we're off down to Perth for the night before continuing down to Liverpool for 3 nights and then across to a Scooter Rally in Cheshire for the weekend returning a week today. We will be driving, as my 1965 Lambretta won't be up to it! Incidentally there is a thriving Scooter Club still in Coventry called 'All or Nothing' named after the Small Faces hit in the Sixties. Little Park Street has a few tales within its walls but I'm saying nothing! Isn't retirement great

Hi all With stock markets worldwide in free-fall as at present, to many folk it will mean little, to some with endowment mortgages it may be a worrying time or for those with investment pensions. I don't believe that the UK economy is in such bad shape. One of the worst areas here in the UK is skill shortages in the labour market. The headlines are mostly in agreement that it is the recession in China that is hitting world stocks. Yet, why should that affect the UK. The UK exports to China are around 4%, hardly a big hit! As with crime, it's the word "Perception" that I believe is the driver of this chaos. So much investment business is on holiday, usual for this time of year, the northern hemisphere summer, so some market trends are underweight. The China economy is actually growing at 5% & is predicted to continue that way for sometime. I don't know if the market has bottomed out or not, if I knew that I would be a multi-millionaire or in jail for fixing the market. The current losers are anyone who is forced to sell shares just now, but if you have a few bob invested & your terms are that your divi is added to your stock rather than being paid out, then sit back, because (if) when the market returns, you will have bought more stock, than otherwise. That should make you smile.

If any of you have time on your hands and you like reading, I would like to recommend 'The Manner of Men' part of the D-Day scene that gives you a real insight in to the action and what can go wrong..

Hi all A cop out! Some could benefit, but the biggest benefit is for the treasury, who need the funds now in order to meet their current commitments. Remember, unless you are down & out, you get owt for nowt!

Hi all A bit of pension reading.

Hi all Retirement is so demanding, I don't know how we cope! Today was the occasion of our Christmas get-together, former finance department colleagues, meeting at the Royal Oak at Brandon. As you expect of me, I arrived by bus, so early that I had plenty of time for a wander around Wolston. Seeing lights on, I walked into the parish church, had a tinkle on their piano, whilst the church was being decorated for the festivities. The next thing, I am supping a glass of warm mulled wine. I cannot remember a previous occasion where I was tiddly coming out of a church, even before going into the pub. What a lovely start to my dinner day. My ancient mobile does not record poor light pictures very well, but you at least get the gist of the happy time. Just one of the smiling faces is still serving the company as an accountant, whilst the rest of us cope with retirement.

Hi all The current turmoil in the government is producing squeaks from all sides, including one senior minister who has stated that the new so called simplified universal pension with no top-ups will not work. Surprise, surprise. It is so universal that only a tiny minority are eligible to receive it, so what do the rest do, starve? No top-ups? The biggest false notion about the state pension systems old or new, is that the actual basic state pension is not a free benefit. Unlike free benefits, the amount that an individual receives depends on their level of NI contribution, for many folk like me who have contributed to it for forty years. The old age state pension is not a free benefit. Over the years, as with many folk, my contributions to the state pension have cost me far more than the contributions to my occupational pension. We are often reminded of how poor our youngsters are preforming in schools, 21st position out of 24 countries, but maybe our politicians need to look at their performance, when it appears that so many of their schemes are devised on the back of a match boxes & lack credibility.