We are not doing enough…
According to UKPA less than half of women are not saving enough towards their retirement – which frankly is obvious.
Most days I read pointless news articles about how we are not doing ‘enough‘ to secure our future. Frankly I’m getting slightly irritated by how constant this kind of news(?) is. Of course the obvious reason why is due to debts and potentially children, which come in my opinion as a direct consequence as to what I see as the “Wages to living costs” ratio, and by this I mean men as well – this is NOT a rant about how woman cannot save…
Going Slightly off the point here, I wrote back ago on my former blog The Whole Truth about my current financial situation and other opinions regarding money saving and moving backs etc, if you want you can read the whole post here.
The real problem I see is the consumer want culture which is all prevailing right now, I’m currently reading an excellent book entitled: Bonfire of the Brands, which is an excellent look at how people use brands to outwardly show people there true (false) personality – I heartily recommend you checking it out.
I want, as do you certain things which will apparently make me(you) feel better about ourselves, now interesting I have a cool job, I enjoy it and it pays moderately well. Rent in my area is fairly extortionate and other slightly annoying factors come in just to have the privilege or living in my home city (council tax) which currently sits at $101 (pounds) a month, for a small, 1 bedroom basement flat in an OKish area of the city. Now by my reckoning if I pay the rent, bills, and food, it would roughly take up half of my salary in effectively one day, the rest of the money is spend on essentials such as broadband (Is broadband essential?, landline, mobile phone, and TV package not to mention paying back a loan for a super excellent Macbook. Again by my super bad Maths skills after all of this expenditure it probably leaves me roughly $150 for the month to spend on things I like (going out, clothes, ciggies), as you probably have realised now, that actually putting money into a savings account would be slightly counter productive.
The solution: Raise wages and give people a fairer deal, stop allowing idiots like myself to spend money on credit cards until the point they can’t afford a magazine in a petrol station (yes this was an embarrassing day!) and make life cheaper to encourage consumer spending of real money rather than credit…
This is all before attempting putting money aside for retirement, which currently is something I “might” like to do. Dammit I just work till I drop, they wont be able to take me…
