As a country that feels it bodges so much stuff up, it’s even more important for Britain to pat itself on the back when it scores a success.
Pension auto-enrolment has been one of those achievements. The scheme has dramatically increased investing for retirement – and crucially got people into the saving habit early.
The key to its success has been making workplace investing simple and relatively painless – money is taken straight out of salaries, gets tax relief and is topped up by employers and then invested to build a pension pot.
This week, two separate reports said that we should build on the success of auto-enrolment and deliver a plan to create financial resilience with rainy-day pots, help people save for a home and increase retirement saving.
One came from fund manager Schroders and the Pension Management Institute, the other from think-tank the Resolution Foundation.
On this week’s podcast, Georgie Frost, Lee Boyce and Simon Lambert look at the plans and whether we could we use our pensions to help fix our finances?
Also on this episode:
- What do the new tipping rules mean for you and staff – and what is a tronc?
- A reader asks: could we make my parents our mortgage lender to save money?
- What is a set of NatWest piggy banks snapped up at auction worth?
- Is there a new top value 50p coin?
- And finally, could you have a Pokemon card worth a small fortune?