Aviva: 14% of Brits are pensions 'ostriches'

A new survey finds that 14 per cent of Britons are suffering from "the ostrich effect" - burying their head in the sand and failing to consider how they will fund their retirement.



According to www.six-steps.org, part of Aviva, 14 per cent of Britons admit that they never think about their pension or saving for retirement.

Around two-thirds say that they still do not feel financially prepared for retirement, while a fifth adopt a spend now, worry later attitude, claiming that retirement is too far away for them to worry about.

It seems that people far prefer spending their money on things that are here and now, with respondents ranking planning for their retirement as only the fourth most important financial hurdle they face, after buying a car, booking a holiday or renovating a house.

Lynne Gray, director of corporate communications at Aviva, commented: "The UK is gripped by a short-term approach that needs balancing out. Essentially, Brits tend to prioritise saving for two weeks in the sun rather than thinking about how they are going to fund 30-odd years in retirement."

And it seems that people need to be saving even more for their retirement now than they did in the past, as pensions are worth less, according to a spokesperson for the Pensions Policy Institute.

In addition people are living to an older age and the money they save has to last for longer, meaning people may end up with lower incomes than they were expecting, he added.

Pensions 'biggest worry for older Britons'

Planning for retirement is the biggest worry for older men, a new survey has discovered.

A poll of 1,000 men by ICM, commissioned by The Prostate Cancer Charity, found that 32 per cent of men said that their pension was what concerned them the most about getting older.

This was higher than the number that was worried about prostate cancer (13 per cent), weight gain (seven per cent), baldness (four per cent) or impotence (two per cent).

Chief executive of the charity, John Neate, warned that while men should not panic about the risk of prostate cancer, they should be more aware of the risks of the disease.

The picture of pensions as a key worry for Britons was enforced by previous research from www.six-steps.org which found that two-thirds of people feel that they are not financially prepared for retirement.

Nearly a third said that they were delaying their retirement planning because they did not understand the financial jargon of pensions, while 17 per cent said that they did not really understand the money issues surrounding retirement.

However, despite many older men being worried about pensions, the www.six-steps.org survey discovered that 20 per cent of people think that pensions are just too far in the future to worry about.

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