On the Perils of Preparing for Retirement in post -Thatcher Britain

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either you’re in or your out


I have lost count of the number of so called Independent Financial Advisers (IFAs) we’ve seen. I say we. My wife has had enough of them and refused to sit in on the last meeting, preferring instead to watch Coronation Street, closely followed by a recording of East-Enders. We could hear Frank Butcher’s dulcet tones through the sliding door that divides the dining room from the lounge. He seemed to be arguing with someone. When isn’t he? The IFA was all right about it. Before he turned up I told my wife it was ok by me for her to keep out of it, provided she didn’t come in half way through. She did that last time and the IFA had to go through the whole thing again just for her benefit. It took ages. I said to her, ‘Either you’re in or your out, which is it to be?’
‘Leave me out,’ she said. So we did.

ASDA and Helen Shapiro


He was a pleasant enough chap, youngish, smartly dressed. Well, they have to be, don’t they? When you get down to it, they’re salesmen; they’re after your money. No point in turning up as if you’ve just been to an exhumation. Anyway, as I say, I’d been through it all before so I knew what to expect. Among other things, inter alia as we say, I knew that eventually he would get around to asking how much we needed to live on when we retire, which is always a tricky one. So, knowing this was bound to come up, I had been doing some planning. The standing orders and direct debits were no problem. The difficulty was getting a handle on how much we spend on shopping. Food principally. My wife does some, I do some. Most of it’s at the weekend but there’s some midweek stuff as well. And there’s the big monthly shop, which we call the ASDA shop, because we always used to do it at ASDA but don’t now because ASDA’s gone a bit down market for our tastes. Not that we’re snobs you understand. Mind you they do play some good music in ASDA, I’ll give them that; lots of sixties stuff. They played ‘Walking Back to Happiness’ by Helen Shapiro last time I was in there. I wonder what happened to her.

the milkman


About a year ago I started a spreadsheet on the computer. There’s a column for each week, and down the left-hand side, in more or less alphabetical order, the standing orders and direct debits closely followed by everything we buy. From All Bran to yoghurt, from air freshener (including fly spray) to Windowlene. There are two entries for milk – from the supermarket and from the milkman. The milkman called round the other day to ask if there was anything wrong with his milk. He was serious. My wife assured him it was fine but I don’t think he was too happy. We haven’t had any from him for the past three months, you see. So he’s having a hard time, what can I do about it? My wife is concerned that when we’re in our dotage, doorstep deliveries will be a thing of the past and we won’t be able to get any milk. Her solution is that we should buy our milk from the milkman and never mind that it’s 20 odd pence a pint cheaper at the supermarket. Like the milkman’s part of English National Heritage or something and therefore deserving of our support. My question is, if we were having a hard time would he support us? It’s dog eat dog out there. I don’t want it that way; but that’s the way it is. I have to live with it and so will he. That’s what I told her.

the spreadsheet


Anyway, every time we come back from a shopping expedition I enter the items from the till receipt onto the spreadsheet, which I have cunningly programmed to work out the average spend per item per week and the average total spend per week. It’s forward looking too. With a bit of creative guesswork on my part it predicts what our outgoings will be when there’s just the two of us. Always the optimist, that’s me. When I do the shopping, and when a suitable opportunity presents itself, I try to put the things on the check-out in alphabetical order. It simplifies things no end when I get home. I get some odd looks from the girl on the till but I can handle that - I’m used to odd looks from women. It’s a bit tricky; it means rummaging around in the basket for stuff. You can find the mange tout, mushrooms, margarine and mustard easily enough and you know damned well there’s some marmalade in there somewhere but you just can’t lay your hands on it. It means, of course, letting the eggs go through before the potatoes, which can be a bit dodgy for the eggs. I asked one of the girls in TESCO if it was possible for the till to give me a print out of my purchases in alphabetical order. It would save me a lot of bother. I think she thought I was mad. When I go to TESCO I always try to avoid that particular girl. I think it’s for the best. She’s uncooperative.

women and shopping


It’s a funny thing, but when my wife does the shopping the entries on the till receipt are all over the place and I’m up and down on the spreadsheet, up and down, up and down. I’m sure she does it on purpose - deliberately randomises the order. Women can be really spiteful sometimes. It’s in their genes. It’s quite tiring for me entering it all up; I don’t think she realises. It’s not easy on the hardware either; my mouse has developed a squeak. There’s over 180 items on the spreadsheet, with new ones coming on stream almost weekly. There’ll be 181 when I get some WD40 for the mouse. One thing the spreadsheet is useful for – it’s a really powerful tool for keeping track. Do you know we bought tomato puree only once last year? On 28 November - 0.37p from Safeway. Now, if you had come up to me a year ago and said to me, as one does, ‘Hey, Wally, what’s your average annualised spend on tomato puree?’ I would have had no idea. But ask me anything now and I can give you a complete breakdown, blow by blow, chapter and verse.

break up


It has not been without difficulty. The spreadsheet was originally predicated on three of us at home – my wife, our youngest son, and me. Then five weeks into it (average weekly spend £136.96 – excluding standing orders and direct debits) and our eldest son, right out of the blue, broke up with his girlfriend. So now there were four of us at home, the spreadsheet was completely buggered and the average weekly spend had gone up by about £20. Still, it did help me to get an accurate fix on the board he should be paying. It’s an ill wind, as they say. I think £130 a month is quite reasonable, considering the service he gets. Free parking, internet connection, collection of rubbish from his room, space in the ‘fridge for all his cans and free laundry (including ironing, folding and putting away).

a smooth full flavoured red


It was 7 15 on a cold damp evening when the IFA turned up. That it was cold and damp is a fact, but not strictly relevant – I just thought I’d mention it. A bit of background. I took him into the dining room and sat him down at the table, which was covered with a thick cloth so we wouldn’t mark the surface when we wrote. My wife was quite insistent about that. She came in and asked him if he’d like a coffee, also, I think, to check that the table was protected as per her instructions. Quite unnecessary; there wasn’t a ballpoint in sight. She didn’t ask me if I wanted coffee because I had a glass of wine in front of me left over from dinner. A smooth full flavoured red with a lively aroma of cranberries and other soft subtle fruits, freshness guaranteed – that’s what it said on the box anyway. £14.69 from Waitrose.

I give it him straight


After the usual rubbish about the weather and how he got lost trying to find us followed by some blah about his company (solid, substantial etc) and how they operated (commission only), his laptop whirred into life and we were away. Name, address, date of birth and so on – not too difficult, even for me. Then it came, the moment I’d been waiting for, ‘And roughly what sort of income are you looking for then, Mr Mason?’ It’s at this stage in the proceedings that most potential retirees have to get their brains into gear for the first time. Not this boy. I’d done my homework. I leaned back in my chair - carefully, because the back’s loose - took a sip of the smooth full flavoured red stuff with the lively aroma of cranberries etc and looked him straight in the eye. I said, ‘£14306.42’.

it's a bargain


His fingers poised over the keyboard and he looked at me - quizzically, I suppose you’d call it - still smiling but not quite so certain now. It had been a long day. ‘£14306.42,’ he repeated, as if not quite sure he had heard correctly. Just checking the facts. It was the 42 pence that threw him, I’m sure it was; couldn’t have been the £14306 – quite a modest sum I thought. If he’d come before Christmas it would have been even more modest, something like £13306. The bill for Christmas was horrendous, what with presents (silk dressing gown and pearl earrings for the wife) stuff for the boys and their girlfriends, the turkey, chocolates, food and drink, after-eights, satsumas, salted peanuts and treats for the dog. It was like doing three or four ASDA shops one after the other. I keep saying we’ll have to cut back but it gets worse every year. I did well on the silk dressing gown. It tore at the seam and we had to take it back after Christmas, by which time there was a sale on. They let us have the replacement at the sale price. I saved over £40. Not for long though. My wife spotted a set of tablemats we’d apparently always needed and couldn’t live without. A snip at £59. Needless to say they weren’t in the sale. I put the spreadsheet in front of him, all thirty pages of it, size A4, arranged landscape fashion with the column headings in red and sub-headings in blue. The bottom line was on the last page. I showed him – £14306.42.

from anchovies to windowlene


I think what he really wanted at this stage was a cigarette. ‘It’s what I call my Budget Forecast,’ I told him, ‘for want of a better name.’ I pointed to the title, all done out nicely in Arena Outline, 24 Point, in a sort of pinkish colour at the top of the first page, just off-centre. I thought if I chatted a bit it might settle him. I watched while he ran his finger down the left hand column, past the anchovies and the apple sauce, the chewing gum and the cigarettes (not mine), the cottage cheese (mine), the frozen chips, the garlic bread, the sausages (Irish), the tinned soup and the smoked salmon. The smoked salmon was from Waitrose, £2.95 on 24 October. Absolutely first class with a bit of salad and some toast. I had it while I listened to La Bohème on Radio 3 one Saturday night when the wife was away. It was live from the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

rounding down


He said, ‘You know, I don’t think I have ever seen anything quite like this. It’s quite impressive.’ He actually said it was impressive. Of course, he could have been taking the mickey, but I don’t think so. I was watching his face when he said it. I told him he could keep it if it was any use to him for his report. He said, ‘We’ll call it £14000, I think’.

the end


That was three months ago - I’m still waiting for his report. But, that’s the way it goes – promises, promises, promises. Nothing in it for him you see; they’re commission only. His interest started to wane when I told him we had made a will, already had life insurance, didn’t want long term disability insurance and were not interested in another mortgage. I’ll read his report with interest, when it comes, if it comes, but I just know, that at the end of the day, I’m going to finish up managing our affairs myself. A pound to a penny his advice will be totally different to the advice we’ve received from other IFAs. Why should I take his advice and ignore the others? What does he know - even George Soros gets it wrong. When it comes right down to it, the only person you can trust is yourself. That’s the way it is. As ever was. As ever will be – world without end. Amen.


Written for NEAR Magazine, June 1999 and published in November 1999.


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