Yesterday, as you probably weren’t aware, was national pension awareness day. I tried to tell you  in my Pension Play Pen weekly announcement but did you engage? I thought not

September 15th was decreed so by the Pension Geeks among whom is pension evangelist Ralph Turner (former Grumpy Old Pensions Man) and a fellow called Jonathan Bland – who I hadn’t met before last night.

Last night I was pension geeked. My laptop proclaims that “Henry Tapper is a Pension Geek”, I have new even geekier glasses, my flat is full of pension geeks balloons and my rucksack is full of geek wristbands. This one modelled by friendly actuary Peter Shellswell (no – not the ape).

Which one’s Peter?
(hint- dodgy fangs)

This full onslaught on what remained of my credibility occurred when I was most vulnerable. An eight hour strategy meeting with First Actuarial, replete with a wonderful hour long discussion of GMP equalisation had softened me up , so I little resistance in me when I arrived at Jamie’s wine bar, Bow Lane.

But Jonathan Bland (chief Geek) would have got the better of me, even had I been on form. The lad’s tale- that he converted to Pensionanity while lying on the beach with his missus this time last year, was the theme of the evening. Like Saul on the road to Damascus , he was struck down by the awesomeness of spending money on his future!

This Damascene moment turned him from a Disney-trained animator into the Geek he is today.

Chatting with Melancholic Mike of Peoples Pension, it became clear that Jonathan is a bit of a whizz at animations.

An inspection of www.pensiongeeks.com revealed a cornucopia of pension goodies on which I could feast my eyes and wiggle my fingers.

I had no need to be made aware of pensions, but I was needed waking up to this stuff!

Wowsers.

Mike reminded me mournfully, that if I didn’t watch my laurels, www.pensionplaypen.com could go the way of www.mycompanypension.com (still a great site) which he runs. Pension Geeks could overtake me and render me obsolete.

Mike reckons without my inate capacity to collaborate. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

So my next move is to send Jonathan Bland and all who geek with him, social media greetings and extend the warm hand of friendship across my entire bandwidth!