A voice from outside the room,spoke to a packed audience within- keen to hear

She was speaking with his Australian counterpart Bec Wilson who I’m also keen to hear from.

There were others in the audience listening through the cans you can see Damien and Bec wearing. Wondering the same question that Damien is asking in his linked in post. Can you get value for your money without knowing how it works?

I guess the same question is asked by those who know how their car works , ask what  the music we love is played with and how to make the food we eat.  Many of us want to know , but many more just sit behind the wheel, enjoy the sound and yomp the food down. We don’t need to know the detail.

What people have to do.

I’m probably Damien’s age and I think I’ve become a lot more tolerant of disinterest over the past thirty years. I asked Pensions Economist Colin Hatley of AB Foods what he thought people had decide one summer morning.

He said two things – how much they paid into the pension and who got the money if they died first.

You might find this brutal but when it comes down to, those are the questions that matter most of us – who pays, who gets paid, the rest is silence.

Is ignorance good?

No it’s not good. If I don’t know how to drive a car, I crash, if I don’t know how music is played, I don’t appreciate and enjoy it, if I don’t know enough about food I will die early! All of these things require some kind of engagement but only enough to maximise the enjoyment and for most people that is a low level of engagement.

It is the same with money. We will watch Martin Lewis on a Tuesday night – that’s ok  and I will watch Bec and Damien – they’re alright, but like most people, I am happy not to calculate the yields that determine my pension (or whatever).

I can tell you that pensions are my most asset because I can, I can measure them against my property and my property is much more valuable . You could say that how you live is more important than where you live and you need income in your later years , to live well. Most people get there and would like to know that they are getting value for the money they put away or sacrifice as salary as most think being in a pension is.

If you give people a measure of “value” for their savings, they will thank you – the Australians do well at that, it hooks people into bothering about how much they pay for retirement and I hope helps them think about who’ll get their money if they die.

If people started seeing the value for the money they saving increasing because they were in a better pension for them, then they would be happy and I guess more engaged. Which is why people like me work on ideas like VFM (showing people how they’re doing) and CDC (which could be the gamechanger for how they do).

In answer to Damien (and I promise you I was asking your question at your age) the key thing is to work out  what matters. Enough to understand how to drive the car, listen to the music, enjoy good food – and have a decent income for all of your years after you stop working.

We have to have people who build cars for a living; we need professional  music players and cooks but we don’t have to be those people ourselves!

I think we are on the same page; what we need from Damien and Bec is a way to get this across to the millions of people like me and my partner and my kids who need to know just enough about pensions to be happy.

Ignorance isn’t bad, so long as your confidence in others is well-grounded. That’s where the likes of Damien and Bec is important.