During the hottest day ever in June, I spoke to a group of pension accountants about what the future of pensions would be to those looking forward to one. This was before the announcement last week that the state pension age for those between 49 and 55 would be moving back to 68 a year longer to wait to the generation retiring today.

I was addressing when I spoke the fifteen million British workers who are under-saving for retirement, those that the Pensions Commission is addressing itself. This was what I said

The question I have asked myself over the quarter of a century since pension schemes closed was how could people like me hang my clogs up at 55. Now- nearly 65, I realise that pensions are not for youngsters. My good friend Andy Young, who advised Ministers on how the state pension works, put taking the state pension himself for three long years. Everyone who knows him remembers how much of an example he made himself.

The easiest way for an adequate pension for the most of us rests is in our working longer.

Claer Barrett repeats this riff in an article in the Financial Times this weekend.

For her, the threat to those hit by the news that they will have to work longer (she is in that 40-55 yr bracket) is that the workplace is not an easy place to be. Claer writes

This week, I’ve been following an unsettling series of social media posts from Stacey Duguid, a former fashion editor who went viral after speaking about the “silent shame” of being “unemployable” in mid-life. Over the past 16 months, the 52-year-old has submitted hundreds of job applications, most unanswered. “The money’s running out, and I’m frightened,” she posted. “And if I’m in this position, maybe you are too?”

It’s no use thinking about Value for money if there is no money.

Duguid was inundated with messages from people sharing their anger about automated AI-driven recruitment processes that they believe screen out older candidates.

So she did something about it

Duguid’s “newly botoxed CV” no longer displays her age. She’s chopped off 20 years of work experience in a bid to counter algorithmic ageism, and launched a campaign for change.

This makes me sad. Here is the team that are assembled to launch Pensions Mutual’s CDC early next year

There’s only one person in the leadership team under the age of 50 and most of us are over 60. This is not a form of ageism, it’s just that people later in life have a different appetite for risk – especially if they have saved for their retirement.

There comes a time when people like Duguid find that getting paid is no longer a right but a challenge. There are alternatives to sending in applications to be rejected by AI bots. There are alternatives to lying to yourself that you’re the age you are and have achieved what you have done. I see experience as more than getting paid, if women work bringing up a family, they have done unpaid work which should sit on the CV as a statement of defiance.

If people will not give jobs to us because we are much too old to compete on the AI algorithm, then we should work with each other to exploit our unique advantage, knowing how it’s done (aka experience).

With AI adding to the uncertainty, Barrett says your forties are the “pivotal moment” to reflect on the next 30 years of work, and how to position yourself to diversify, retrain or even set up your own company.

According to the Office for National Statistics, 48 per cent of self-employed individuals in the UK are aged 50 or older. They’re not sitting around – waiting to be offered work!