Wednesday, December 6, 2017

working until the end of my days..?

So I'm now of an age where I no longer think myself invincible, but thankfully still have all my teeth and a bit of hair...
And strange things happen when you get to this point in your life, especially with regards to thinking about your future - you find yourself not just concerned with worrying about if/how you'll take your next holiday, but also that thing called 'retirement'...

There have been studies, articles, and blogs published over the last few months around the internet that suggest we're all going to need to keep working for longer into our twilight years than previous generations have, and that when we finally can officially retire from the need to be an economic contributor to society and the economy, we'll have a lot less to live on.
But these all tend to relate to the 'traditional' worker - people who are employed, with an employer contributing to a pension pot on their behalf, to supplement what will be left of the state pension when we get to that milestone in our lives.

I, and quite a few others, are self-employed. We don't have an employer who's making contributions into a pension fund on our behalf. And most of us struggle to be able to afford or justify making any monthly contributions to a fund out of our own earnings judging by trends in freelancing and self-employment which shows we earn less than our employed counterparts (while at the same time somehow paying more tax!):

To redress this, some of us will be looking to use our homes as our pension fund - hoping to pay off a mortgage, and then when the time comes, sell the house and live off the proceeds. But many of us don't have a mortgage or the security of owning our own home (and may never be able to). And even if we did, we may have children who we want to offer some legacy and support to for their own futures, and so we don't want to blow whatever we might be able to raise from selling our home to make sure we can leave something for for them...

All of which, is why I'll be following the current initiative on thinking from TheRSA into how retirement security for the growing numbers of people who are self-employed can be strengthened ('cos the current options don't really work!)