Thoughts of a carer

A few years ago, when I worked in an office, we once briefly discussed pensions. I was staggered that all of the new recruits - clever graduates in their mid twenties - had chosen not to pay into the company pension scheme; they felt they had other priorities, and that they would be able to save for a pension later in life. Anyone in that position now should read the following and perhaps consider where they might be in forty or more years time. + + + This morning I was updating a spreadsheet I keep on Viv's and my pensions. I like to update it every year, tracking our finances and at least making an attempt to work out how long it is that our savings might last. It's something that I think many of us are recommended to do, especially those of us that don't get substantial final salary pensions. To produce such a plan you need to make some assumptions about your financial needs in the future; you need to think about how your lives may change, whether both of you will live i...

In the 1980s I worked in an office on the South Bank, over the road from what is now the Tate Modern. Around the corner there was a depot of the London Borough of Southwark's street maintenance team, and it seemed at the time that some of their workers used to practice road repairs outside our office building, for it was always being dug up.  I remember well the discussions amongst us engineers, scientists and statisticians, wondering for how long the pneumatic drills were going to continue.  'They must have a new batch of recruits', I remember a manager saying in September one year, about the time milkround recruits were joining us. 'It may seem ridiculous that workers are paid to dig holes and then fill them in, but that's how they train'. No one was quite sure whether he was taking the mickey or had inside knowledge of Southwark council (who, at the time, were very left-wing and regularly mocked in the press), but he was making a good point.  Workers need to ...