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Pension engagement’s not for me. I’m swapping portals for peppers someday soon!

henry tapper

I will let you into a secret. Every morning I switch on my pooter and log on to FT. com (see above).

I look at the little icons at the top to see if they are red or green.

If they are red, I run away and find out the cricket score (India 177-7). If they are green I check the S&P 500 icon – if it’s green I go to myaccount.landg.com and find out how much my pension pot has gone up since the day before.

This, I believe, is what is called “pension engagement”.

On a typical day, I will lose or win a multiple of my earnings on this pension pot lottery. That’s because I’ve saved all my life and have almost all my pots in one place.

I have learned not to cry when I lose a couple of thousand quid and not to crow when I win some. It’s all a gamble, totally out of my control.

This is no way for me to plan for retirement. It shows the total lottery that pensions have become. Do people have the first clue what has happened to make their pot go up or down, have they any idea how much they’ve spent that day on charges (clue it is a lot more than I spend on shopping and about what I’m spending on heating)

I can make these informed observations with some sanguinity because

  1. I am still working
  2. I have a positive bank balance
  3. I have a decent income from Zpen – my defined benefit pension scheme.
  4. In “only” five years , I will be drawing my full state pension (apart from the bit that Zpen is paying me)

I could of course have given my money to a financial adviser to look after. I suspect that the advice would cost me around £500 per month and the extra fees for a wealth management service about £1000 per month on top of that. I would however then have the benefit of a new “portal” where I could see all my wealth – like I get from MoneyHub (for free).

I’m not sure that the holistic portal is worth the extra and whether an IFA would make my money go up more and down less, I have no way of knowing.

But what I am absolutely sure of, is that as soon as I stop working – that big capital reservoir with L&G is going to be split, with a chunk of it going to pay off the mortgage and a chunk going to an occupational pension scheme that I know of that exchanges pots like mine for scheme pensions. That is so long as the pension they promise me is better than the best annuity I can get from Retirement Line.

I say this with some certainty because I have no intention of getting a dodgy ticker turning my pooter on to see if the icons on the top of the FT.com homepage are green or red.

I am instead going to spend my time in retirement reviewing my shopping from Waitrose

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