Just been surfing the net and came across another consequence of the massive global crash in stocks and shares in the past few days. Spare a thought for those poor souls who are spending their last day at work today before going off to a well earned retirement. After thirty or forty years ploughing money into their pension pot they are now facing the purchase of their annuity which will define their basic income for the rest of their lives. The actual income level they will get will be considerably smaller than even if they had left just last week or before the start of the summer. Those looking at a relatively comfortable planned retirement just days ago could now be looking at a very, very different future.
Of course those on final salary schemes are safe aren't they! Or are they? Massive shortages in pension funds for final salary schemes were being forecast before the crash. With a huge collapse in fund values it’s going to be very hard seeing how those can go on.
Gordon Brown's tax raid on pension schemes caused the problems that pensions were seeing before the banks started to tumble. Will he get the blame for the new plunge. I hope so! But then the Tories or the Lib-Dems are no better.
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