We all know that not enough self employed people are saving for their retirements. Millions are going to be coming up short, unfortunately.
This led the government to make a pledge to the self employed community a few years ago, where they announced that auto-enrolment policies would be extended to those who worked for themselves.
As you are no doubt aware, this “auto-enrolment” idea has been a great hit in the traditional employment community, where employees are automatically entered into their companies pension scheme. This ensures that many people will have enough cash stashed away when they get to retirement age.
So it is all going well for the employed, but what about the self employed? According to experts, not enough has been done to make good on the pledge to “make auto-enrolment available to the self employed.”
Not only that, but it was the pensions minister, a guy by the name of Guy Opperman who went a step further and declared at the Conservative Party Conference that there would be “no doubt whatsoever” in regards to self employed people getting an auto-enrolment scheme.
Fast forward to the present day and do we have any kind of self employment pension scheme that gives the option of auto-enrolment? Er…no.
Instead, all we have heard recently is vague quotes from the government where they appear to be back tracking on their comments of a few years ago. For many in the know, it seems the politicians no longer want to know.
For example, in response to a recent statement from the government, a senior analyst at a famous investment broker firm had this to say…”most would regard the new pledge to simply encourage self employed people to save in a pension rather than them being auto-enrolled.”
Do you know what though? While I agree with the experts about the fact that politicians have gone back on their word, in my opinion, I reckon that auto-enrolment pensions for the self employed is not particularly a great idea in the first place.
People should be making their own choices if you ask me, and if you are smart enough to be self employed then you are smart enough to sort out your own pension. If you don’t then there really is no-one else to blame.
It isn’t like there is a lack of information about self employed pensions. A quick internet search will give you all the information needed to make an informed choice.
Forget about waiting around for the government to do anything for you (it will be a long wait.) Take control of your own situation.
