Benefits and pensions: how are we going to sort out this mess?

People who don't earn enough to save adequate amounts for retirement are being badly advised to save money they can ill afford. Auto enrolling makes this a thousand times worse. The demographics time bomb means there isn't enough tax revenue to pay pensions and benefits so tax the young by stealth by getting them to save just enough to lose their benefits entitlement. The government's solution seems to be moving pension age gradually to within a whisker of death.

Interesting, there are many out there who cannot save and a lot who just do not believe in it.

The UK has one of the lowest state pension benefits in the EU but the average person don't appear to be aware of that.

Not sure that auto enrolling those on low incomes to a retirement savings vehicle is great if the current 'mean' testing continues.

Its about time a group of pensioners took a case to the European Court of Human rights to demand ALL their pension contributions back from their pension companies in cash. NOW!. Its about time that the personal lifetime savings of ordinary people were returned to them instead of the bloody mess we are now in that requires every penny of their savings to be gambled daily on these god-awful stock markets. Look at what's happened since April this year - look at the drop in value of a £250,000 SIPP just since Monday this week. Why should ordinary people be hung out to dry by self-serving market traders driving lamborghinis?

The whole pensions industry is a fraud. pensioners with money in a SIPP or other scheme should be able to withdraw all of it to pay off remaining debts, secure a roof over the heads of their kids and make retuirement a little more secure.

Sod pensions!

Keith Hanna is right in thinking that UK state pensions are far lower than in other EU countries. However, in most cases this is a reflection of far higher contributions made by employees and employers during the working years.

The real issue though is whether 'state funded' pensions will ever be possible again. In the days when we worked for 50 years and then conveniently died a couple of years after retirement, it was irrelevant as to how basic pensions were funded. Now we work for 40 odd years or less before enjoying 30 years or so of retirement.. The cost of that retirement will have to be be funded out of lifetime savings and the choice to be made about the relationship between living standards before and after retirement.. We are quite happy now to restrain expenditure from Monday to Friday so that we can splurge at the week end. We need the same thinking on a longer time scale. The immediate response will be that this is impossible for people on low incomes. That is true, and some state support will be needed, but the real solution will be economic growth, and I mean real economic growth not the largely irrelevant cud chewing of lawyers, bankers, public officials, etc. whose inflated pay our leaders happily include in GNP calculations.

I cannot understand the logic of the previous Government's reduction in qualifying contribution years required for the state pension to 30 when people are living longer.

I contributed almost 50 years.

er, doesn't the SI in SIPP stand for Self Invested? Isn't it the case that the pension fund can be 100% in Cash if desired? What is the good Dr ranting about?

My rant is about being unable to disinvest entirely and take all the cash out and put it in my own bank account or give it to my kids. Where has this shibboleth come from that all pension moneys have to be invested with a "responsible" 3rd party - like Equitable Life! If I was responsible enough to save it I should be responsible enough to do whatever I want with it on retirement.

I have just been informed by my SIPP holder that my drawdown has to be recalculated every 5 years by law - who the hell has the right to decide all this?

The pensions industry in just another fraudulent arm of both government & investment bankers, who both take risks with our money.

There are no guarantees that the money you saved for your pension will materialise as you assumed, with interest & growth, & pay back for not spending it on holidays & expensive but mundane gifts!

Not many people believe that they would be better off in investing any more - the numbers of people who are in difficulties because they are receiving pennies in interest earnings on their savings while interest rates are being kept artificially low for the few to benefit from it!

It seems that the system has been expertly woven into now conning people of their hard earned wages in any shape or form that government can invent, & that the industries responsible for pensions can reap the benefits from plundering valuable savings, investing on the open market.