Does Peak Oil make having a pension redundant?

[LastDrop]

I've just been reading Jeff Rubin's 'Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: What the Price of Oil Means for the Way We Live'. The books discusses how high oil prices will keeping bopping economic growth on the head every time we try and come out of a recession leading to increasingly localised markets.

I haven't got any pension provision yet (I'm 34 by the way) as everything I read about Peak Oil makes me wonder if its worth bothering as GDP will take a hammering which will surely feed into lower stock markets. However I do want to plan for retirement. Is it worth starting a private pension? I would ask a financial adviser but I'm sure I would get a funny look if I mentioned Peak Oil.

What sort of plans do people have for their retirement? Does anybody have any suggestions?

[woodburner]

I started a pension when I was 33. (Quite a few years ago). At the time the reasoning was that it would give an income equivalent to £11,000, which then was a reasonable salary. It is currently worth today around £5000, note that is TODAY'S monetary value. Not much good for more than 25 years contributions.

34 is 14 years too late to start IMO, I started too late as well. I now think of getting all the things together that I think I'll need WTSHTF.

[emordnilap]

To be perfectly honest, my 'pension' contributions would have have been far more profitable in premium bonds.

Talk about good money after bad.

[biffvernon]

I wonder if the first priority should not be to spend one's life accumulating the skills, material and social capital that allows one to live happily on the basic state pension.

[woodburner]

If you get rid of "not", I agree.

[JohnB]

I missed out on company pensions. I was made redundant from my first job at 25, the minimum age for joining, and stayed in next job for under 5 years and you had to be in it for 5 years to get any benefit! My self employed income never got to the level where I could afford big contributions, but I had a pension mortgage when they were the in thing, but it performed so badly I stopped paying into it. Luckily I paid off the mortgage without it. I kept getting statements telling me that If I paid into it until I was 65, I'd get a lump sum big enough to pay off half the mortgage, and the pension income would be enough to keep up the payments on the balance. And that was quite a few years ago. I'm paying a small amount into a pension, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

So I agree with Biff. That's one of the aims of the Eco-Hamlet project, and if that doesn't happen I need to do something on a smaller scale on my own.

[biffvernon]

If you get rid of "not", I agree.

Ha - I toyed with that. It's an inerrogative 'not', associated with the 'wonder', a subtle use of English grammar.

[adam2]

I would agree that a pension plan is likely to be of limited worth in future, and might be entirely lost in the event of a great(er) crash.

To learn useful skills, aquire useful goods, and spend any spare money on tangible assets such as land and buildings, is likely to be more worthwhile.
Whilst the financial worth of land buildings might decline, the idea is not to turn a cash profit but to have somwhere to live, and hopefully grow food and firewood.
A PV installation, solar thermal, a good wood stove, water storage, and so on is likely to be a better investment than anything reliant on BAU/perpetual growth.

[JohnB]

Having land and buildings is fine, but you only have to look at the state of farms, smallholdings and many houses with gardens, when put up for sale when the owner dies or goes into a care home, to realise that's not the whole answer. As the owners age, they aren't able to maintain them, let alone produce the food and fuel they need for survival.

I think a plan for succession is needed too, where the owner can gradually slow down, and hand over parts of the land to younger people who can keep it productive. In return, they get food, fuel and care provided. There's no point having a substitute for a pension that doesn't provide for your needs when you really need it.

That's one of the reasons for the Eco-Hamlet idea.

[snow hope]

I would agree that a pension plan is likely to be of limited worth in future, and might be entirely lost in the event of a great(er) crash.

To learn useful skills, aquire useful goods, and spend any spare money on tangible assets such as land and buildings, is likely to be more worthwhile.
Whilst the financial worth of land buildings might decline, the idea is not to turn a cash profit but to have somwhere to live, and hopefully grow food and firewood.
A PV installation, solar thermal, a good wood stove, water storage, and so on is likely to be a better investment than anything reliant on BAU/perpetual growth.

I largely agree with this. But on the micro side, it is hard to buy buildings and land with say £200/month (typically what you may want to put into a normal pension). There is no doubt that learning to be a handyman - basic electrics, plumbing, joinery, in fact being able to do most jobs around and in the house is of major worth. As is building up a good set of tools, garden implements, etc. I have done all these and compared to most of my colleagues, I never pay for tradesman, I always do the work for myself. By being careful and working slowly, I find it is possible to do a good job - the major drawback is the length of time it takes - often 3 or 4 times as long as an experienced trademan. Very satisfying though and saves a fortune!

But I have not ruled out pensions. I started my pension when I was 23. I have moved jobs 3 times and thus have 3 different little pension pots. The first is salary and inflation linked, but the smallest of the three The second has been moved into Guilts and Bonds. The third has been 80%moved to Guilts and Bonds, 20% moved to an Index Linked Fund.

I put an awful lot of thought into how to mitigate the financial markets crash (that I saw coming) a couple of years back and moved it all just prior to the first crash in 2007. I checked the value the other day and despite most people's pension dropping between 30 and 50% over the last couple of years, mine is almost level (about 2% down), so I am very pleased to be honest.

How it will survive over the coming years is anybody's guess, but I will continue to monitor the markets (of all forms) and try to protect the little fund I have manged to build up over the last 25 years. I continue to contribute monthly at the same levels as before, which indicates I must have some faith, if not simply as a savings mechanism.

I will consider gold and land bought with a SIPP in the near future.

[mobbsey]

What sort of plans do people have for their retirement? Does anybody have any suggestions?

2 kids, who I'm training to grow food, cook, fix things, wilderness camping, etc.

[CountingDown]

What sort of plans do people have for their retirement? Does anybody have any suggestions?

2 kids, who I'm training to grow food, cook, fix things, wilderness camping, etc.

Sounds like my plan

Interesting how it conflicts with the depopulation required by resource and Climate Change constraints.

[mobbsey]

Interesting how it conflicts with the depopulation required by resource and Climate Change constraints.

No it doesn't -- your missing the dynamic link between adaptive evolution and niche ecology.

My kids, to some extent but certainly to an extent greater than many, should be able to look after themselves. A lot of the kids they go to school with, and who regard my kids as "weird" because they can cook and go for walks to find food, will not. Therefore, in the clear Darwinian definition, the kids of serious Peak Oilers are likely to be more "well adapted" to their environment than most others, and so they are more likely to survive; they won't (hopefully!) be part of the depopulation cohort in the contraction of the human species back to a sustainable level.

[CountingDown]

Interesting how it conflicts with the depopulation required by resource and Climate Change constraints.

No it doesn't -- your missing the dynamic link between adaptive evolution and niche ecology.

My kids, to some extent but certainly to an extent greater than many, should be able to look after themselves. A lot of the kids they go to school with, and who regard my kids as "weird" because they can cook and go for walks to find food, will not. Therefore, in the clear Darwinian definition, the kids of serious Peak Oilers are likely to be more "well adapted" to their environment than most others, and so they are more likely to survive; they won't (hopefully!) be part of the depopulation cohort in the contraction of the human species back to a sustainable level.

I guess I was considering that if everybody took out this same third-world "pension" then there would be a significant conflict with population messages. Particularly as I might be better off with 3 kids . . . or 4 or 5

[PS_RalphW]

I have the same pension plan - with one difference. My kids are adopted, so I have not increased the number of mouths to feed.

Time will tell if they see me as worth feeding when I am old and decrepit.

(I also have a company pension for nostalgic reasons)