Editorial: a manifesto for youth savings

Auto-enrolment, by engaging us with our savings, will catalyse this disturbing realisation. Our retirement incomes are set to be even more unfair than the salaries, job opportunities, housing and education we’re currently receiving, compared with older generations. It’s a bleak prospect we’re only just waking up to.

If one more person flakily suggests to me: “We must all work together to solve this pensions crisis,” I’ll make them buy me a one-way ticket to Switzerland for when I retire.

My generation is an unfairly treated minority, representing just 11 per cent of the pensions market, while Generation-X makes up 70 per cent. We’re small-time business compared with our parents and grandparents, and so naturally we will have to push harder to get what we need.

The industry does want to serve us, but we need to make it serve us better.

What happened when schoolchildren refused to eat their revolting school dinners? Jamie Oliver came along and made them ‘lovely jubbly’. We need someone to revamp pensions for young people in this country. Biting the hand that feeds us could do us harm, but if it shows them we’re bothered then it’s a starting point for improvement. And it would not have a worse outcome than caving in to inertia and pretending to be grateful for sloppy seconds.

Steve Webb, armed with his guaranteed defined contributions idea, is catering to a commonly felt consumer sentiment – but he’s certainly no Jamie. His concept appears to shrink meagre pots even further through additional charges – and employers have no appetite for it.

We need financial certainty to motivate us to save, but if pitiful pensions are the only option on the menu, it might soon be time to go on hunger strike.