I have made the point before and will, I’m sure, make it many times to come. People when they retire, lose their work income and switch to income from investments which they think of as their pension. That money can come from house lets or from inherited capital or it can come from savings in a pension plan, but unless that pension plan lasts as long as you need it to last, you may find yourself “fired from retirement” and having to return to work.

There is no relief for older people from inflation. We still have to pay for energy to heat our house and drive our cars, food in the supermarket goes up and up and many of us have to buy on the yellow label to make ends meet. We have council tax to pay,

This is reality not just for those in the United States of America. The FCA research in this country, conducted by Ignition House, tells us that the most common destination of pension pots is into bank accounts and too often it is spent too early. This is why the Government is using its Pension Schemes Act to require workplace pensions to default people into retirement income which should last as long as they do. Nest, which has 98% of its 14m savers following whatever default it gives them has got permission this weeks to offer them a flex and fix plan which looks as close to a pension as a DC plan can do!

Of course, if there is not enough in the Nest pot to pay the income people need to keep them “getting fired from retirement” then there is a problem. Many people will retire on inadequate income and will have to raid their pension pots and when they’ve done that they’ll still have to return to work.

The author of the survey and accompanying report

In a recent survey of 2,500 people in Britain, the most important thing to ordinary people was that state pensions grew at least as fast as inflation and (with the triple lock) in some years faster. People know they cannot live on the state pension but they know it is theirs forever and for their partners when “forever” ends.

The report’s by Andrew Harrop and he finds that people are self centered , demanding that as much of the money going to people’s retirement, goes to keeping them from being fired from retirement.

I don’t want to disappoint those who think that engagement will get them there but for most of those interviewed they expected to have things done for them.

Infact the two things that people didn’t fancy was having to make their more of their own pension contributions and lose their anticipated state pension increases (the columns going to the left and at the bottom).

In the trade-offs between getting fired from retirement and getting more of their pay deferred, people will accept getting it done for them – even though most people know that that leaves less money for negotiating better pay rises today.

We think of improving our pensions as a way of protecting ourselves from being fired in retirement and returning to work. This is what goes through their minds as they read the holiday brochures and the price page at the back.

All of this spells out that people will be prepared to pay taxes in return for security later in life; whether these taxes go to accrue state pension or to accrue private pension, they expect to have a plan to keep them from returning to work after being fired from retirement