Teenage Take over #9
- October 30, 2023
- Written by Luke Quinn
- 6 months ago
- No Comments
It's the 9th teenage take over: What's the difference between an iPhone and a pension?
Jess and I have just been comparing groans about how long we’ve spent seemingly explaining the same thing to our Nans about how to better use their phones. I mean, what are we, IT support?
We get it, some things in life are just complicated and hard to understand. For our Nans it’s technology and for us pensions are definitely confusing.
In fact, we’ve come to the conclusion that the more we are getting to know about pensions, the more we realise there is to learn and the less we understand.
Learning new things
Loads of things are confusing or overwhelming when first introduced; whether that’s a new game with rules you don’t yet know (like how Nan always complains about all the rules of Uno) or a new piece of technology. Technology is constantly evolving and developing, but many people (especially older people) are well and truly set in their way of doing things. One of the key messages from An Inspector Calls is just that – older vs younger – young people are more adaptable to change whilst older people are more set in stone. Or so my English teacher says!
We’ve been learning how much pensions have changed, DB to DC, guaranteed income to flexible access. The changes impact all generations that haven’t retired so we are figuring out if parallels can be drawn between old people and technology, and young people with pensions?
A helping hand...
When it comes to technology old people have us, the younger generations to lean on, help out and be taught by. But who is there to help us when it comes to pensions?
It seems that many older people have the better deal of DB that most of our younger generation will never have the luxury of, so there’s less support for us with pensions than there is for old people and technology. If you have a technological issue with your phone you can walk into an apple store, or visit my house as I’m basically tech support for my nan. Interestingly, she likes my help, but always complains that I’m using the computer – newsflash – technology is not the root of evil! A good hyperbole and contrast here between the older and younger generation would be for us to declare that we believe that pensions are the root of evil. However, we don’t really think that, but some of the pension investments are questionable!
An unfair advantage
So old people never really had to think about their pension because their employer did it all for them, but they do have to struggle with technology. Luckily for them there are hundreds if not thousands of support centres around the country as well younger folk to help them. Technology is also a mainstream subject with a plethora of online hacks, how tos and top tips available. We can’t say the same for pensions. Even during pensions awareness week.
Considering we have been learning and blogging about pensions for 9 months now we sort of expected to know (or at least feel like we know) so much more than we do. There’s no denying pensions are very broad and very complex. And there’s no mainstream, easily accessible, slightly entertaining way to learn more. For instance we were discussing what happens when it’s time to actually receive your pension and neither of us know what to do and when, or even who to talk to.
What’s the answer?
The simple truth is, we don’t have the answer, or even the slightest clue. We’re just a couple of teenagers, sort of enjoying the monthly challenge set by Karen. How do you think we make pensions popular?
See you next month…
That’s all for this month. We hope you could see where we were coming from… any concept can seem difficult to grasp at the beginning, but 9 months in pensions feel more of a mystery to us than an iPhone does to a granny! Until December…