If you are prone to looking in your estate agent’s windows for “comparables”, you have not been having a lot of fun lately. House prices in the UK are falling at their fastest rate in a decade and those who tell you “my house is my pension” have gone a little quiet.

My pension pots (I have two) are making me more money than my full time job right now and I’m not having to pay tax on all the money that keeps appearing when I login to my websites. I took the trouble to combine all my pensions more than 10 years ago and I’m pleased to see that my funds have continued to outperform the AgeWage benchmarks both for the average save and (especially) for the more cautious “mature” saver.

I am not very smug about the value of my property but I am very smug about the value of my pension. I bet this is the only article this week that where the author is stating that his pension pot is at an all time hight – BUT MINE IS!

What is more my – and your – state pension entitlement went up nearly 10% last year. The Lamborghini in the garage that was worth around £200,000 is now worth £220,000 and for most of us, that money is all to come.

Sing while I’m winning

Celebrating the good things in life , does not generally include celebrating the dimensions of your pension pot(s) . I am not a happy bunny because my pension is up or sad that the value of my property is down. My emotional balance is based on other things , as I hope yours is.

However, I say this to my younger readers and to those who are coming to the end of their working careers, you can’t buy a sausage with a brick. Equity release is all very well but if you are relying on your property to bail you out in later years, then that’s because you didn’t do the saving thing right when you were working.

Do the saving thing right, pay more into your pension than the bare minimum, infact prioritise your pension and make sure you are invested and not stuck in some dumb-cluck bond fund designed to protect you from the sky falling on your head

Then you can sing when you are winning, as I am doing now.

The diffidence that faltered

“If you know, what life is worth, you’d look for it right here on earth” sang Bob Marley

But to have done instead of not doing

                     this is not vanity

               To have gathered from the air a live tradition

or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame

This is not vanity.

         Here error is all in the not done,

all in the diffidence that faltered  .  .  . wrote Ezra Pound

Diffidence is what happens when you look back not forward, when you choose not to invest in the future. Pensions have been a lifelong obsession of mine, they are the shards that I have gathered for my posterity – my after-work life.

I’m living the best life today – have a great family, my health , fantastic jobs and a great pension. Tomorrow much of this might fall away. But my pension will still be paid and my pot will still buy me more pension – just wait and see!

Your house is what you live in , your pension is what you live off. You need both and should celebrate them as the fixed points in your turning world. Don’t worry be happy and celebrate what you have done , not the diffidence that faltered.