Today, we expect to hear from a Chancellor who is going to put personal choice back into workplace pensions. This article argues that for most of us, the decisions we take on pensions don’t matter much, we get what we are given,

Although now ensconced in the arts and crafty Penny Hill Park hotel, I’ve spent most of my day listening to people explain to me why people hate pensions.

Yesterday morning, my friend John Tsalos, now at Just, was discussing the complaints his Australian family had against Super. Super does not give them restful nights, instead it is inciting insomnia as Australians struggle to understand what to pay themselves from their accumulated wealth.

Later in the morning I listened to Tom McPhail, guiding a group of youngsters through 70 minutes of discussion about “why the young hate pensions”. Some people thought that it would be all so different if the word “pensions” was replaced by “saving”.

There appear to me to be some youngsters who are frugal and prudent with their money management and some who are spendthrifts. To over-generalise about a generation of British youngsters from anecdotal evidence , any more than it is to draw conclusions from John and my conversation.

And yet we seem keen to bury “pensions” in favour of savings and forget that what most people miss most in retirement is their pay cheque.

It is very hard for young people to imagine the possibility of not getting a job again, but that is what retirement is about, it’s about turning your back on the labour market and relying on the state , the trustees of your pension schemes and your personal savings to pay your way through what could be the second half of your life.

To pretend to youngsters that they can provide for  themselves for decades by saving small sums into  a workplace pension , is reckless. People will need good luck, successful investment, inheritances and sound financial management to make ends meat for the final part of their lives. People know this very well.

Youngsters don’t, to my mind. “hate pensions”, they hate the over-enthusiastic promotion of pension saving as a panacea for the loss of the income that gets them out of bed for four decades or more. It’s just a big fat lie and all the little lies about tax-relief and tax-free growth and the like are just too high up the ladder of abstraction to make the big fat lie any better.

In truth, we are better off selling pensions to both old and young for what they are, not what we think people would like them to be. Pensions are an insurance against living too long and offer a guarantee that they will last as long as we do.

Pensions do not guarantee you a happy retirement – even if they produce a huge income – they are only money.

In my experience people get by in retirement with what they’ve got and make the best of their lives without allowing the prospect of being poor in retirement to ruin their time at work.

So a blog of generalisations about a day jaw-jawing about pensions. We will get the pay cheque in retirement that other people determine. Love them or hate them, pensions are things that happen to us, which is why a fiduciary responsibility applies on the pensions industry