Money Central - Times Online - WBLG

From bad to worse

A few nuggets of information regarding the state of

UK

pensions have emerged over the past few days.

Be pension wise with your property

This week brought news that buy-to-let lending is continuing to boom, despite signs of a slight cooling in the general housing market. With yields, the amount of rent divided by the property price, falling below the cost of borrowing, this continued strength should be ringing alarm bells. And those alarms should be particularly loud for people hoping their property portfolio will bail them out in retirement.

Gordon Brown..the new Vicki Pollard?

Uninspiring, gimmicky and shallow – and those behind it would appear to have forgotten all about its true meaning. Yes, you know the silly season has truly arrived when the chancellor proudly unveils his pre-budget report to the public at large.

Pension penury

The money team has just finished a week living on the equivalent of the basic state pension and the experience has left us hungry, bored and determined to double our savings. 

The Marshmallow test

If you were four years old and were told that you could have one marshmallow now or two if you were prepared to wait a while, which would you choose?

Pandemonium at the pensions’ service

The news pages have been full, recently, with tales about the administrative chaos at the Home Office. But it may not surprise you to learn that it isn’t the only government department that is having problems.

Should we work until we are 68?

This week the government will argue that the state pension age should be raised to 68 when it publishes its long-awaited pensions white paper.

Turning point for pensions?

After a three-year inquiry, Lord Turner of Ecchinswell today published his final recommendations for reform of the UK pension system, and in doing so heightened the growing tensions between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Lord Turner thinks the government should increase the retirement age to 68 by 2050, abandon means testing to encourage savings and link the basic state pension to earnings rather than prices.

The Chancellor considers the proposals too expensive but the Prime Minister is thought to support the plans, even though they might require higher taxes.

Bleak warning for the young

Young people were given a bleak warning by the TUC at the weekend: start saving soon or you will face poverty in retirement.

The TUC found that only just over a quarter of men aged 18 to 24 and only one-third of women have a pension, and it urged them to get one as soon as possible. You need to save at least 11% of earnings from the age of 25 to get a decent retirement income, rising to 14% if you put it off until 30 and 18% if you delay until 35.

Pensions minister replies to your comments

The sheer ferocity of some of Times Online's readers' comments last week over the Government's action - or should that be inaction? - to the Parliamentary Ombudsman's report on the failure of contributory pensions schemes was astonishing.

It certainly seemed from the comments that some of our contributors deserved a response, so we approached Stephen Timms MP, the pensions minister.

You may not like the response...

Indictment or unsustainable leap of logic?

A fascinating report into Government culpability over the collapse of a series of occupational pension schemes was published today.

Pensions and the gilts bubble

The annual publication of the Barclays Gilt Equity Study is likely to have passed most people by this week. It is, by any standard, a pretty dry document. A chunk of it comprises the sort of triangular tables usually reserved for telling you the shortest distance between Wick and Aberystwyth in road atlases. But hidden within its depths is yet further bad news for Britain's already beleaguered pension savers.

Wot about the workers?

Pension providers and advisers can hardly keep their mouths from watering. Today one Sipp provider, Alliance Trust Savings, published a survey showing that advisers are confidently predicting a sales boom once the new tax year starts on April 6. And tomorrow the industry is meeting government ministers to try to thrash out the eventual shape of the proposals flowing from the Pensions Commion led by Lord Turner. But the interests of the public seem to have got lost in all this clamour.

Who could afford to save £1,200 every month?

"What's A Day?" I was asked last week. For while we on Times Online's Business desk include several financial whizz kids, we are not all entirely well briefed on all aspects of personal finance.

"Pensions..." gurrmph, "April...", hurumph, "latest Government overhaul." In common with most people, as we seek to put off any dealings on pensions for as long as possible, so I put off answering the question in as perfunctory manner as possible.

To carry back, part 2

Thanks for the comments from ibe on our previous blog entry. Magnus Grimond, of Times Money, says that, as ever with these things, it is impossible to give hard and fast advice without knowing the individual circumstances of the person in question.

To carry or not to carry back?

Like me, you are probably feeling that a financial detox is in order after the Christmas spending binge has left your bank balance looking groggy. Don't, however, let enforced belt tightening now allow you to take your eye off making some provision for later.

Calling our bluff?

Will you be taking part in National Pensions Day, or do you think that the very concept has the words "damp squib" written all over it? John Hutton, the secretary of state for work and pensions, announced today that the Government will earmark a day in March to talk to "stakeholders" and members of the public about our retirement.

Why are we having "simultaneous consultation events" in major UK cities? The Pensions Commission last year said that we face a future pensions crisis, and we must work longer, pay more taxes or be poorer in retirement.

So far, it has been the unelected Pensions Commission pushing forward the idea of a longer working life and higher spending on pensions. The Government, packed with ageing MPs whose own pension is the envy of all, is reluctant to repeat the Commission's assertions.

Brown's Sipps U-turn leaves us gasping

Without doubt one of the most controversial announcements in yesterday's Pre-Budget Report from the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, was the inexplicable U-turn he performed on Sipps, removing property investment from the possible savings schemes and at a stroke costing the investment industry potentially millions in wasted time and resources spent preparing for the measure, which was due to be introduced next April

Pension costs and Turner

We make no apology for returning to Turner again on our blog. It is the issue of the moment and it deserves considered thought. But amidst the welter of reaction to the noble lord's proposals, one deserves special mention. The considered view of Standard Life, the Edinburgh-based mutually-owned life insurance group, is that the private sector and not the state should be running Lord Turner's new National Pension Savings Scheme.

Turner and turn again

A very busy day here on the Times Online Business desk, dealing with coverage of the Turner Report on pensions this morning

Pension haves and have nots

In one week, British pensions could face their biggest shake-up in 50 years, when the Pensions Commission report into the retirement crisis is published. Sadly, it's too late for the the head of the Commission, Lord Turner, to read an interesting new study on directors' pensions by the TUC. We knew that directors pensions were not suffering from the general malaise affecting the sector. But the extent of their relative pension wealth is staggering

Pensions farce

John Who? John Hutton. None the wiser? He's the new secretary of state for work and pensions. We're all facing poverty in retirement and a miserable slide into penury in old age, and the Government appoints its fourth secretary of state for work and pensions in just 12 months.

Who owns my pension?

Once it was all so simple. You joined a company and signed up to the pension scheme. After 40 years' service you got your gold watch and a pension. But a deal struck by Marconi, the telecoms company, is set to turn that orthodoxy on its head. This may seem like an arcane story in the business pages, but its implications for every single one of us in a company pension scheme are immense.

Work until you drop

It's not easy being a graduate these days. Not only are you drowning in debt, but once you start work, you'll be at it for far longer than your parents. 

Up in smoke

It is enough to make you choke but the average British smoker spends £92,000 - the equivalent of a two-bed holiday home in Devon - on cigarettes in their usually-shortened lifetimes.