It's money in the bank

People in their forties and fifties aren’t saving enough for retirement. So the following generation, worst hit by the cost of living crisis, need to act now, says Katie Rosseinsky

- Katie Rosseinsky

Whenever a letter arrives emblazoned with the logo of my pension provider, I feel wracked with anxiety, promise myself I'll read it later... then shove it in the nearest drawer and forget all about it. I can't be the only person who's guilty of doing so. Unless you're very au fait with your personal finances, this piece of life admin tends to be one part boredom, two parts confusion.

But writing off our retirement plans as tomorrow’s problem might mean we’re making an already tricky situation worse for ourselves.

Earlier this week, a report from the think tank Phoenix Insights found that people in their forties and fifties are not saving enough and will have “a nasty shock” when they reach retirement, with just one in seven putting aside enough to avoid a drop in their living standards. But if Gen-Xers, generally considered to be more comfortable financially, are facing a gloomy picture, what is the outlook like for younger generations – the ones who are now bearing the brunt of the cost of living crisis and a shocking property market? And is there anything that they can do to ameliorate it – other than bracing themselves for clocking in for work on Teams or Slack (or whatever equivalent we’re using by then) in their seventies and beyond?