What do our Silversurfers know about Pensions?
Some surprising results – Barometer Survey shows that many of our Silversurfers community are baffled by pensions.
Pensions … not something many of us find particularly interesting. But, it’s important that we’re all up to speed with what we are entitled to. Also, for those of us approaching retirement, it’s important to make sure we are planning for the future. That’s why we ran our Retirement and Pensions survey to find out what you think about pensions and also to provide some useful information for you on our website.
So first of all, a big thank you to our Silversurfers who participated in the survey of which 57% are retired and 43% are not yet retired.
Do you know what’s going on with pensions?
With all the pension changes which have been introduced recently we wanted to find out if the government’s communications have been effective. So we asked if you knew at what age you would receive the State Pension. Worryingly 22% of you approaching retirement did not know the correct answer! So the government is not making things clear enough for us. And even though the government has been trying to tell us about changes, 72% of you don’t remember seeing any information about the changes.
Will your pension be enough?
Those of you who are already retired told us that most of you are funding your retirement with the State Pension (71%) and/or a Private Pension (77%) and we were pleased to see that more than half of you feel comfortable financially. Worryingly, 29% told us that you are OK, but struggling to make ends meet and 15% saying that you are struggling and need financial help. Some of you who are parents are worrying about not leaving an inheritance (14%) and nearly 30% of you are worrying about not being able to pay your bills.
For those of you approaching retirement, even though many of you have a private pension that you and your employer have contributed to, 45% of you do not know how much you will receive each month from your pensions savings. Many of you (54%) said you’d like to retire at 60, but 63% of you realise that you won’t have enough money to retire when you would like to.
We wonder if there is so much uncertainty about the facts because most of you (73%) have never taken pensions advice. Reassuringly, 60% of you who have taken advice found it worthwhile. Also, some of you are aware of the free Government online tools you can use to help with planning for retirement, for example 45% of you knew about getting an online pension statement.
We’re going to help
We asked if you were worried about retirement and nearly 50% said you were extremely or very worried. This is awful! It has made us sit up and think how we can help you.
The Silversurfers team has decided that we need to provide some clear and understandable information about pensions. So we have discussed this with the Department of Works and Pensions and we will work with them to provide you with much clearer information and facts, all in one place. We don’t like our Silversurfers friends being worried or confused. We will be in touch when we have updated our Pension advice pages.
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