Salary Survey Spring 2006 - risks and opportunities

Once again our readers have given us an insight into their pay and working conditions in our salary survey, an event that never fails to produce some interesting observations.

This time it was on pensions. With A-day just a week ago our questions turned up some astonishing answers. Firstly, and perhaps most dramatically, 69% did not support the government’s proposal to raise the retirement age to 68.

Given all the concern over current pension levels and the nation’s savings, this comes as something of a surprise. Surely we need a rise to make sure we all have a fund to keep us in our old age? Clearly accountants don’t think so, but there may be some interesting explanations for this other than pure bloody mindedness.

Firstly, of course, our financially astute readers may already have their pensions well in hand and therefore feel it unnecessary to extend their working years. Many people are prepared, the pension shortfall is not universal.

But they might also feel that given that everyone has already made so much in contributions towards their pensions, it’s simply unfair to ask them to work longer. If this is the case then there is probably a belief that other solutions are available rather than punitively making everyone work for many more years than they otherwise would.

This may be supported by the fact that 57% would refuse to work longer in order to earn a bigger pension.

We want our rest, we feel entitled to it and we are willing to sacrifice a bigger pension pot to get it. Given these strident views the debate on how to solve the problem is set to run and run. It seems the government would do well to seek the advice of the profession on pensions before placing our retirements even further in the future.

To download the full salary survey as a .pdf, click here