05 March 2007
A series of recent reports have sketched a gloomy outlook for Britons in retirement, realising only too late that they failed to save enough.
But Britons perform well on beginning retirement savings early, starting at 28, earlier than in any other ‘major’ country, a new survey from AXA has found.
Their retirement plans get afoot even before young Britons have first stepped onto the property ladder, the survey shows, with the average age for first buying a home at 29.
And Britain’s youngsters appear less short-sighted when compared with their peers. Americans start saving for old age at 30, Japanese workers at 36 and Chinese citizens at 37.
“It is exciting to see people starting to take more responsibility for their own income in retirement,” AXA’s head of pensions and savings policy, Steve Folkard, remarked.
But he warned that direct savings in a pensions pot could be more reliable than waiting to release equity from a family home.
Many older people find, when they come to retire, that they are too emotionally attached to their home and too fond of being surrounded by friends to simply use the property as a mechanism for equity release, he commented.