A survey by Baring Asset Management identifies that over a third of 55-64 year olds do not know when they are going to be able to afford to retire.
We should be shocked by this but we are not because of course the reasons are very well known.
Leaving aside the irreparable damage that successive and indeed the current Government have done to pension provision by constant and often unnecessary change, this age group has also had to deal with a lot of economic and investment market turmoil.
Final salary schemes have been pretty much eliminated as the bedrock of pension provision.
Fund values have risen and fallen and then risen again as the world recovers from the mess of the “credit crunch” and in the UK the Government policy of QE has caused annuity rates (the traditional meld of converting pension funds into income) to crash and burn.
Add to all this the financial help that many of this age group have had to provide to their offspring and you can fully appreciate why funding for a retirement at a selected retirement age has been so difficult.
In our book Your Money Day (to be published very soon) we have set out the steps that you me to take to work out what retirement income gap you might have.
Well worth a read because in our view knowing when you are going to be able to retire is one of the most fundamental aspects of good financial planning.
