The joys of getting old(er) – discuss

[Nirish guy]

after 70 yo, it is all downhill, except for one thing.

?? What's that, looking forward to the special mushed up plates of potatoes, peas and carrots with chicken gravy all on a spoon when the dinner lady comes round with the dinner cart in the care home ?? :-( OMG you can tell I'm taking this 50 thing really well this week can't you !

Ha I "am" joking by the way on all counts, just another day like any other I know - it's every day AFTER that I'm more worried about ! :-)

So, here - ( and this is actually a serious question guys !!) - PENSIONS ! Due to the whole 50 thing I ended up sitting down with a pension advisor who for various reasons ( including tax savings etc) has advised that I need to throw a reasonably large amount of money away now each month or year to both provide a semi decent top up to my existing (crap) pension amount due and I'm literally just in the middle of debating the merits of that in my head.

So, one on hand I said "ok I'm getting older, be responsible and DO that and provide for my future etc" BUT they younger "fuck it, spend it and live now" part of my brain is screaming at me 'WTF are you thinking, you could get hit with a bus or a stroke and die next year, fuck it, keep the cash and either spend it or at least have it on hand and not locked away in a pension".

So, based on the whole asking your elders for their life experience thing - can I ask, if there was a poll ( I've no idea how to create one) what, after based on looking back at your own life now etc, would the general consensus be - be responsible and put it away, or fuck it and keep in to hand as money ready to spend ? I guess the answer may be "somewhere in the middle" but that sort of defeats the point of bothering really as the pension return isn't so worthwhile perhaps ?

Any thoughts or general advice guys based on your own "real" lives and not a pension brochure with pics scaring me about the type of shit hole room I might end up in someday if I've no sensible pension etc ?

[frequent]

Any thoughts or general advice guys based on your own "real" lives and not a pension brochure with pics scaring me about the type of shit hole room I might end up in someday if I've no sensible pension etc ?

Surely your situation is a minority one as you’re a business owner (I believe). Don’t your retirement plans include cashing out the capital gains you’ve built up over the years through the sale of your lucrative business(es)? If that is so, how many active posters do you think share your circumstances?

[Nirish guy]

Surely your situation is a minority one as you’re a business owner (I believe). Don’t your retirement plans include cashing out the capital gains you’ve built up over the years through the sale of your lucrative business(es)? If that is so, how many active posters do you think share your circumstances?

Actually to be honest I've always assumed that the majority of posters here were more well off than not a( not that I class myself as "well off", just more "doing ok but nothing special", i also assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that we also had some other business owners here too. Either way though I actually don't see that that fact one way or the other has much to do with my original question as a person, whether a business owner or not, still needs to think and plan for the likes of retirement and yes whilst I might factor in some possible future sale value of whatever I can sell on etc, everything is relative and anything is only worth what it's worth to the person who's buying it, whenever that may be etc and what I know to be the case today call wise can change quickly change.

Today I have several good hard working, money making staff members, some modern stock and the health and just about enough brain left to run things to do ok but In 5 / 10 / 15 years time things change. Staff get old and market shares may (will) drop along with my own energy levels too and so perhaps the businesses successes and so value too. So yes, whilst of course I'll always hope to be able to "cash in" when the time comes nothing is ever guaranteed in life and so to not also look at having a tax efficient, guaranteed pension pot sitting there waiting for me seems foolish perhaps - or not - depending on ones outlook in life - hence my question to others here.

So my question wasn't actually directed solely at businesses owners but to all of us in general and was actually more a question about "life" in general i.e whats others have experienced and what their thoughts are re if they believed they were better to "save for a rainy day" or "live well now and let the chips fall where they may" in the future.

And thank you to Pennyboy for his response as his was exactly the sort of life experience I value and was hoping to get.

[frequent]

Actually to be honest I've always assumed that the majority of posters here were more well off than not a( not that I class myself as "well off", just more "doing ok but nothing special",

Certainly "well enough off" to afford regular trips to distant lands to sodomise the natives, but that may be because of an "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die" mentality. I may be wrong, but I doubt many of us are, for example, lowly paid manual labourers. My scepticism equally leads me to doubt that we are so similar in our circumstances as to offer each other financial advice - although thinking oneself "normal" and therefore assuming every other "normal" person must share our circumstances and outlook is a popular human fallacy