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Average pension savings will struggle to see us fund life to our mid-80s, never mind 100
The average pension pot of people in the decade before retirement is €108,000. Photograph: Getty Images, they will be comfortable financially when they stop working.
By the time they find out, it could well be too late. O’Shaughnessy’s comments came in the context of a new report from Irish Life on some of the hopes and concerns people have about a world where a growing number of us will live to be 100. Under current “traditional” structures, that will require our pension funds to last for 34 years – not far off the length of some working lives.
Survey evidence for the report found that the average pension pot of people in the decade before retirement these days is just €108,000. Ronan and Conor Burke: ‘Suddenly, every financial institution needed a solution to a problem we had spent years preparing to solve’Even assuming we only live to our early 80s, the average in the Republic now, that amounts to pension income of €6,042. Even if you qualify for a full State pension, that still comes to just €21,600.
If that pot has to stretch to 100, the figure will be noticeably lower, or our private pension will simply run out.
“For the first time, we have kind of got pensions coverage now,” says another senior Irish Life executive, Teresa Kelly Oroz. “But we have yet to have a discussion around adequacy. ” Political parties, all scarred by doorstep doubts in advance of general elections, have no interest in reopening the debate on raising the State pension age. But as we live longer, the choice is stark: either we save substantially more in our working lives, or we work for longer.
As Kelly Oroz puts it: “There has not been an honest public policy or Government discussion around pension adequacy and how much you do need to be saving for retirement and how long you need to be working to be able to sustain that into retirement. ”‘When you’re buying an old house, assume everything needs to be done’Mixed signals before budget as Chambers says income tax cuts to be ‘modest’Gardaí investigating possibility that teenager deliberately knocked off e-bike in Co ClareIs controversy-plagued Pete Hegseth eyeing up a 2028 presidential bid?
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