Going out after the watershed, Channel 5’s two part exploration of how fit we are to retire, sits awkwardly between the Yorkshire Vet and Chris Tarrant’s Extreme Railways, not the kind of TV you’d watch unless you’re into Michael Buerk and Felicity Hannah.

I’m a fan of episode one and , though I’m crusty enough to have difficulty with catch-up, I’ll be watching episode two when I get in from the Rewards awards tonight

Last night we saw Aron Ling and Rachael Newton  sandwiched between Michael and Felicity work out that they haven’t saved enough to realise their dream of a gite in France and were on course for two weeks in a caravan overlooking the north sea.

They also found they would need to hand back two thirds of their week Lidl run , were they living on their post retirement AgeWage.

And they discovered that their posh steak supper at the local bistro would be downgraded to an open fish and chip supper.

All of which made them think, and it made me think too, as this couple were old enough to know better and clearly didn’t. He’s a fireman who in the public service would be looking forward to a proper pension , but he works for Norwich airport and has £60,000 in a Scottish Widows workplace pension.

A crisis of expectation

This wasn’t a program about investments or dashboards or guarantees or anything else of the paraphernalia we call “the pension industry”, it was about money saved and money to be spent.

Put simply, the couple thought they were doing ok with £60,000 put away and Felicity kept delivering envelopes that told them otherwise. Here were two working people with a reasonably affluent lifestyle and a house worth £180,000 who had a “pot but no plan”.

There wasn’t a financial planner in sight, but as Felicity kept banging on that financial planning was what this couple needed. There but for the grace of God go I and I bet a high proportion of those who stayed tuned in after the Yorkshire Vet were making some mental calculations about whether they were any different.

The harsh reality of this program was not sensational, it was horribly familiar. People are enjoying the fruits of today and complaining they cannot give up their current lifestyle for the fruits of tomorrow.

And it didn’t stop with lifestyle , one of the stories was a lot darker

Heating bill doubles after husband is diagnosed with emphysema. A budgeting nightmare and 50,000 elderly people have died in last 5 years from a cold home #crumbs

— Pension Plowman (@henryhtapper) December 4, 2019

A problem easier to illustrate than solve

We know from the election just how expensive it is to put pensions right on a national basis. The cost of restituting a part of the “stolen” WASPI pension is estimated at £58,000,000,000. The DWP estimate the cost of full restitution to be three times that. The cost of meeting the expectations of everyone like  Aron and Rachael could run into trillions (there are two hundred £50 billions in a trillion).

That’s how short we are of meeting our collective expectation of an age in later age. It will take a massive lifestyle shift akin to giving up smoking and drinking to adjust to a world where we are effectively saving for the retirement we dream of. While this blog focusses on the minutiae, (scam-avoidance, ending rip-off charges  and providing people with proper income choices in later life) , the big picture was on Channel 5 last night. It didn’t make for comfortable viewing for Nic

Well, this is just doom and bloody gloom innit ⚰ #pensions https://t.co/bbzlxACnE1

— Nic Millar (@NJM71) December 4, 2019

And the program didn’t stop at confronting people’s unreasonable post-retirement expectations. The sections that looked at the cost of care focussed on the post-retirement finances on a lucid lady who was losing both the love of her life and her life savings.

This bit on the cost of care is good. But how should I budget for that? I’m hoping the Buerkster will move on to that… or will I have to wait til episode two?!? https://t.co/12vt5TwHL9

— Joe Craig, Quietroom (@JoeCraigQR) December 4, 2019

More questions than answers and Joe – the optimist was frustrated by the lack of magic money trees. Is it any wonder that successive Governments have been kicking these cans down the road? We can barely afford the front-line NHS, we are nowhere near affording to meet the 400 pensioners a week who sell their houses to meet their later life care costs. Opinion on social media (among my lot) was divided – but more positive than negative

Very good programme on #pensions Quite depressing really (I’ll have to keep my younger relatives on side). Britain is already “in” a pensions crisis, not “heading” for one. @FelicityHannah made some good points – plan on how you will afford to eat, never mind France! 👍

— Nic Millar (@NJM71) December 4, 2019

The obligatory scandal slot.

Pension programs cannot get by without talking about the perils of investment and this one was no different. A couple of retired civil servants had placed the proceeds of their savings with a Forex specialist who had gone bust and now owed them their dream home in the south of Europe. They had tried to hedge their currency exposure with the wrong people and the story told us about the vulnerability we all have in the strait of Hormuz. Our tankers are laden with oil and there are pirates about. There should be protection but there not always is. My friend Joe got hot extremely hot under the collar about this,

Ep1 done. Nothing about what your £ does while it’s invested. Nothing about how saving more gets you more. Nothing empowering. All scary – “you won’t have enough” – while also questioning the stability of pensions, with stories of collapse & scams. Tricky.#britainspensioncrisis

— Joe Craig, Quietroom (@JoeCraigQR) December 4, 2019

The program walked the fine line between fear and hope, need and greed. I thought it walked the line.

Beware or despair?

As with so many crisis – including our nearest and dearest BREXIT, the impending catastrophe rarely turns out to be quite as bad as we thought and it is usually averted by pre-planning. The ads to the program included a cheery salesman from an equity release broker telling us that we could buy our sausages with bricks. On a day when M&G closed its mega-property fund for lack of liquidity, I was a little sceptical

Oh good – here comes that nice equity release adviser to help all the hard working savers whose expectations have been dashed in retirement – leaving them with #crumbs @JoeCraigQR @EveK1979 @MuchMore_Less

— Pension Plowman (@henryhtapper) December 4, 2019

There was a section of the program when Aron and Rachael discussed their business planning for later life. It was clear they were simply unaware of what the future held. This program stress-tested their dreams and found them falling well short of the £250,000 minimum savings threshold they’d need to stop working.

The truth is in short supply but there was plenty of it in this program.

The big question is whether this truth makes us aware – or despair.