Company pension schemes and auto-enrolment

The Government announced yesterday that auto-enrolment into a company pension scheme will apply to all companies, whatever their size. This will obviously create more issues for smaller companies where the cost of implementation is disproportionate. But it does mean that future generations of older people, when all this becomes just normal business practice,are likely to have better incomes in retirement. That's the theory anyway. The changes come in from October 2012 for larger companies through to September 2016 for smaller ones.

We'll also be hearing a lot more about NEST (the National Employment Savings Trust) in the next few years. This has been set up by the Government for those organisations who do not have their own pension schemes.

With the default retirement age going in 2011 presenting many firms with an older workforce with some difficulties,followed by these new rules on pensions, employers are really going to have to concentrate some time on older workers. If they need help, they know where I am!

A pensioner's life

I read in the Yorkshire Post this week that the insurance company AXA are asking a handful of people aged 25-40 to live off the state pension for a week i.e. less than £95. It seems to be part of a campaign to get this age group to think more seriously about putting money aside for the future. I thought it was quite an innovative way to get over the message by using peer group case studies and it will be interesting to see the results.

The lady who was featured had to seriously adjust her current life style and expenditure to be able to live off this amount of money involving shopping at Lidl and taking the bus and it was all seen as a bit grim. However, I was wondering if it would also help to show that our current life is just all too fast and the stresses we create in many respects unnecessary and that maybe, just maybe, slowing down and having the time to travel in a more leisurely fashion, looking around at nature, cooking from basic ingredients etc may show a life much more appealing.We have two key resources, time and money, and possibly we have lost sight of how precious time is.There again it would be good to have the money to enjoy our precious time without worrying and there are so many in our society unable to do this. I hope the AXA pilot helps in some way to address this.