Bag's Rants

Pensions hit again.

Clearly this case where a gay guy can collect his lovers pension is going to have a major impact on pensions. Read here about the European Court of Justice decision. It basically says that the whole of the EU will have to conform and treat all partnerships the same way. The pension funds will have calculated figures that will not have included payments of this sort so that means that pension funds in general will need to payout less across the board to meet these new obligations. More than pensions will be impacted by this though.

As pensions have already been hit by Gordo's tax and the company's payment 'holiday' several decades ago as well as all the financial issues which abound today it doesn't take a genius to see that paying into pensions is not as good today as it was. Basically knowing what I know now I wonder if I would put my funds into a pension fund at all and would have directed more towards other schemes.

It made me think though that currently we can't really rely on any long term planning at all. When plans put in place decades ago can be screwed in a very short timescale by a government to meet it's self imposed obligations. I wonder how anyone can feel comfortable making plans now for thirty years into the future based on the last few years. Can we expect a new type of long term savings scheme to cater for this or should we be looking at using existing schemes in a better way? One concern is that even more changes will be made by our cash strapped government and other savings schemes will be screwed even more. Already with the taxes on savings it is only the low rate tax payers, funnily enough those without any money, who actually make any money out of the interest payment.

My only ray of hope is I'm not at retirement yet so unless these greens screw everything completely with this global warming scam I still have a little hope. Fingers crossed.

posted by Bag @ 8:41 pm