Who Should Control Your Pension Investments? – with Tom McPhail

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:03]Welcome back to Investing Unlocked Extra, sponsored by Pension B. I'm Georgie Frost. Now, from arguments over whether the government should have a say over how our pensions are invested to the passing of a new pensions bill, renewed focus on salary sacrifice, and more questions over the future of the triple lock. A week is a long time in pensions. Well, joining me to break it all down is pensions expert and Times columnist Tom McFale. Tom, it is an exciting time to be a pensions expert.

[00:00:31]Well, let's talk about the pensions bill. It's now passed into law, but it almost didn't. We'll get to that in a minute. But top line, what does it mean for us?

[00:00:44]>> So, this is the government taking on work that a lot of it have been ground work have been laid by the previous governments, but >> if I had to summarize it in one phrase, it would be fewer, bigger, better run pension schemes. So what the government's saying is, look, we need to tidy up the whole pensions industry. All the reforms that have happened over the last 20 years, great. We need to kind of bring it together now. Tie some knots off. And in the end, what that will mean is the pension schemes you're saving into will deliver better investment returns. They'll have lower charges.

[00:01:14]They'll be better run. So at a personal level, you just keep paying your money in and at the other end you'll get a pension, but maybe you'll get a slightly bigger pension as a result of all these tidying up reforms we're doing. Now, that's kind of that's how I'd summarize it.

[00:01:28]>> Fantastic. I will go into more detail into those ones, but I do want to discuss the mandation clause drama, aka the government's great pension power grab. Where are we now with it? And I'm writing thinking you were not a fan of this >> massive massively Georgie. I hate it. Um I So look, one of my one of my jobs is I am a trustee of a 10 billion pound pension scheme. It's final salary and money purchase. So um I I have responsibility for the governance of tens of thousands of people's retirement savings. And there is a thing called fiduciary duty. I have a legal responsibility to optimize the returns I get on the money that I'm looking after on behalf of the members. That is literally my job, right? And they trust me to do that. And you know, I am I am paid to do that. That that is what I'm here to do.

[00:02:20]>> What the government wanted to do was to say, well, that's all very well, but we we'd quite like you to invest the money over here. is that we're going to introduce a legal power that if you don't invest the money in the way that we want you to, we can force you to do it. Now, this is a hill I'm willing to die on, right? I really deeply deeply object to the state telling individuals how they should dispose of their private property, which is essentially what we're talking about here. And I'm doing it on behalf of somebody else, but but that's my fiduciary duty. So, so what the government wants pension schemes to do is to invest more in what they could loosely call growth assets. So, it's infrastructure, it's private equity, it's it's it's investment opportunities that will help the British economy grow.

[00:03:06]And you can say, well, what's not to like about that? We need the British economy to grow faster. Um, and pension schemes have got capital, so so why would they not do that?

[00:03:15]I kind of agree with that.

[00:03:18]But it always has to be the pension scheme trustees ultimate decision of is this investment in the members's best interest. Is this going to you know deliver the best riskadjusted returns for the members is going to help their pots grow best? And if I don't think it does or if my fellow trustees don't think that's the best investment for my members then we shouldn't do it. And I think our members would want us to be able to make that choice. And so so that was the tension. That was the battle between the government and the pensions industry. To their credit, the House of Lords dug their heels in and kept sending the legislation back to the House of Commons and saying, "No, we're not happy with this clause. Take it out, change it, modify it." So the legislation has now gone through. As you said, the mandation clause is in there as a backs stop power, but it's significantly watered down and there are lots of exemptions for pension scheme trustees to say, "Well, we just don't think we're going to do this." So, so the reason the government wanted to do it was they felt if if they didn't put the clause in there, the pension schemes would always not do it. And technical point here, and we'll maybe come on to to some of the reasons why the concern is with things like private equity and infrastructure, they have higher charges. Yeah. and and there's a lot of focus on bringing charges down. So the government says, well, look, if if you pension scheme trustees just focus on charges, you'll never make investments in these assets because whilst they'll deliver better returns in the long term, you can't get over that hump of, oh, yeah, but it'll look more expensive and we don't want to be seen to be investing in expensive stuff. So we'll introduce this clause that says no, no, you must invest in this stuff even though it looks more expensive because in the return in the long term, it'll deliver better returns. So, so we ended up with this fudge where the government's got the mandation clause in and the bill's gone through. Great. Um, but pension scheme trustees do have an opt out and we can look at it and say, I'm just not going to make that investment and we have the right to do that. So, there we are.

[00:05:10]>> So, I was talking to a UK equity income fund manager. His argument was, and I'll be getting him on his my show later on to discuss this, um, that look, you know, tax relief on pensions is incredibly generous. So why shouldn't the government to a certain degree get to direct some of that money into assets that they think will help the UK grow?

[00:05:36]Now, it's not dictating which individual investments everything should be invested in. And we should point out this is largely default funds.

[00:05:45]Obviously, you can always opt out. It doesn't affect private pensions. Those sorts of things. What do you think of that argument?

[00:05:52]>> Okay. So, I mean, you're right that this this whole mandation thing applies to the to the default fund. So, yes, you can always opt out, but the reality is more than 90% of people don't because they've got better things to worry about in their lives. So, they >> they just join the pension, they go into the default fund, and so that's where most of the money ends up. So, so, so you're right, you have that option, but most people probably wouldn't even be aware they could exercise it. On the tax relief point, I kind of agree with that.

[00:06:18]I mean, the 70 billion pounds a year the government's throwing in various tax breaks at pension schemes, it's a lot of money. But there's a good reason why they do that. Because they want to incentivize people to defer consumption, to put money aside for the future, otherwise they'll become a welfare liability. So, there's a delicate tension there between the government and the citizens. And then the third leg of that stool is the employers and the businesses who are sponsoring these pension schemes. If the government said we will introduce tax breaks or we'll introduce tax penalties, however you want to frame it, whichever way around you want to put it, you know, >> to incentivize you to behave in a particular way. I'd be a lot more sympathetic to that because they would then be saying, "Right, well you, the pension scheme trustees and maybe the employers, you still have the ultimate decision over what you're going to do with your money and where you're going to invest it. But by the way, if you invest over here, look at these extra returns you'll get as a result of the tax treatment we're willing to offer on that. Now, you then you then still leave that decision-making power in the hand of the pension scheme. So, yeah, you could make a you can make a case. So, I don't entirely disagree with your fund manager friend.

[00:07:24]>> Okay. Then um people would rightly be questioning though, didn't we already have some sort of voluntary agreement in the >> Yes. Yeah. The mansion house agreement, mansion house compact. Yeah. As it was called, which was originally brokered by Jeremy Hunt under the Conservative government and then a similar alternative deal was put together by Rachel Reeves.

[00:07:47]>> Yes. But it was voluntary. And so the deal was this this group of 17 different pension schemes all said, "Yeah, we'll we'll make these investment choices, but if you read the wording of it, it was we will make these pension scheme investments where we consider it in the best interests of our members." Oh, and also, by the way, subject to you, the government, introducing various interfaces between pension schemes and uh the investment industry to make it easier for us to make these investments.

[00:08:17]So it a it was a trade-off, b it was voluntary. Um and if they just left it at that, I think everyone would have been happy. And then the government came along and said, "Well, we're now going to introduce some legislation to force you to do the thing that you said you wanted to do voluntarily." So now it's not voluntary anymore. It's you know, it's a mandated thing. So >> the thing that worries me with this is just I suppose the precedent that it sets. That's that's my concern that things can be inserted into bills that you know you may think governments now are absolutely fine but it's the governments of the future that perhaps we should be cautious about is is just my thinking about principles of these things.

[00:08:58]>> Absolutely agree with that. So one of the things we've now got in the legislation is this sunset clause. So it it'll only last until I think 2035 or 2032. I can't remember the other. So that's good.

[00:09:10]>> But but but I agree with you. You know, even if you think this government's good, what about the next government?

[00:09:15]And let's face it, British politics has become a little more volatile like [laughter] but so I agree with that. I mean, my other deep concern with it is just this basic principle of the government thinking it can exercise a power to dictate how people dispose of their private property and where you invest your money. And that's for me the really important principle. You know, I'm I I believe in the free market. I believe in individual choice and I don't want central government, central planners trying to manage the economy. They always make a mess of it, you know, just like they always think they know better and they never do. So, I just don't want them to cross that rubric.

[00:09:52]>> One thing it says to me as someone who's who's not a pensions expert, I am just a a pensions punter, shall I say, is that it sort of implies to me that the government doesn't trust pension funds.

[00:10:04]that they feel they have to add this.

[00:10:05]And trust is so important because we know and I'm going to get on to this in a minute, but a lot of people have been messaging me, you listeners and readers, and saying that's it. I'm just going to I'm just going to not I'm going to opt out, which for goodness sakes, don't don't don't do something like that.

[00:10:20]Please don't do. I will get on to um your your tips and tricks a little bit later on, but look, let's talk about the pension bill in a little bit more detail. The good, the bad, the ugly points. I assume that you are quite glad that they did get this over the line this mandation clauses as watered down and as much as you don't like it. What I'm hearing from the industry is actually the pensions bill was a good thing. So let's delve into this. We've got you know consolidation mega funds default options at retirement all of that sort of stuff. Tell me what what is it going to do?

[00:10:54]>> And like all of that is good. So, so, um, they're making it, so they've said, you know, the default funds have to be at least 25 billion pounds. So, they've said effectively bigger is better. Um, and so if you can't get your fund up to that size, you have to merge with somebody else, right?

[00:11:13]>> Is bigger better? Is bigger better?

[00:11:15]>> Up to a point, Lord Copper. So, so >> [laughter] >> um if you if you look I mean you know it's interesting when you look at the data they've published to kind of underpin this and the there's only the loosest correlation between size and investment returns. In fact, you know, you get the I mean like in terms of the dispersion of the chart in terms of the returns, it's like it's like a hillbilly firing buckshot at a roadside. It's just it's the the returns are scattered all over the graph, right? So, it's not a slam dunk that bigger is better, but you can definitely make a case that you can pay for better governance, you can pay for better investment research, you can pursue investment opportunities that require a certain size. So, I'm willing to go along with the broad argument that probably yeah, bigger schemes will be better and it seems crazy that we have thousands of pension schemes in the UK.

[00:12:08]Now, you can make an argument about what is a good number, you know, is it a dozen? Is it 50? Is it a hundred? Um, but probably not thousands. That doesn't look efficient to me, right? So, because that means thousands of lawyers, thousands of acties, thousands of investment consultants and so on and so on so so lots of snouts in the trough.

[00:12:27]Let's let's kind of strip that down a little bit. So, I think everyone's pretty happy with that. And then also the big important provision is the consolidation of people's individual pots in different pension schemes. And there's this perennial problem caused by autoenrollment of people changing jobs and leaving behind a small pot of money from a previous job and then they kind of forget about it. And we've got dashboards coming which will help solve that to a degree where you can go onto a website and it'll help you track down past pension pots. But still it's really inefficient to have £500 here and £1,000 there in old dormant pensions. So, one of the things the legislation does is it will create a framework for pension schemes to automatically consolidate your old dormant pension pots >> into whichever current pension you're in today. And and you know, to me, I think everybody's on board with that.

[00:13:16]Everybody says, "Yeah, know it. I mean, it's actually good for the pension schemes because it costs them money to run these small pots and unless it's a few thousand pounds at least, they're losing money on it." So, everyone's a winner from that. So, and [snorts] then there's a thing called this value for money framework where they're going to do all these different measures of how good a pension scheme are you running.

[00:13:34]Let's look at your investment returns.

[00:13:36]Let's look at your charges. Let's look at the quality of your services. And, you know, if if you're not ticking the right boxes again, potentially this legislation introduces a power for the government to say, well, if you're really not measuring up on these different metrics we're creating, you'll have to stop trading, right? Continue to to to fail. Well, you'll just have to merge with somebody else. So again, it's about creating a framework which will force pension schemes to either up their game or consolidate together into, you know, back to our fewer, bigger, better run pension schemes. So the one final thing I want to talk about on the on the pension schemes bill is this requirement for pension schemes to help people in terms of how they draw their money out at retirement.

[00:14:16]>> What they're calling default, horrible term, this default deumulation. Now building up a pot of money is relatively straightforward. just keep throwing the money in and the pot will grow. How you manage that pot of money through a through a retirement when you don't know how long you're going to live, you don't know what inflation's going to do, you don't know how your investment returns are going to go, is fishly difficult.

[00:14:38]It's like trying to repeatedly thread a needle whilst riding a roller coaster.

[00:14:41]Right? So, what the government said is instead of just saying to people at retirement, there's your bag of money, don't spend it all at once. Right? Which is what we've been doing until now. The legislation also says you, the pension schemes, have to actively help people manage that pot of money through retirement. Now, that's going to be tricky. Um, but in principle, I think again, I think the idea is a really good one, and I'm really pleased they're doing that as well.

[00:15:06]>> Yeah, I definitely agree with that one.

[00:15:08]Uh, moving on, Tom, to the triple lock.

[00:15:11]So, a certain former prime minister has waded into the debate on this one. Tony Blair calling it outdated and unaffordable. Um firstly, what is the triple lock? What has it achieved and why is it so controversial?

[00:15:27]>> So the triple lock was introduced by the coalition government in 2011, I think it first kicked in. It was a liberal democrat idea but enthusiastically adopted and championed by the conservatives. It's how you increase the state pension every year. So you've got the state pension which is now about125,000 a year. the basic state pension and then the triple lock says it will go up every year by the best of at least 2 and a half% or inflation if that's higher or if earnings growth across the economy is even higher then it'll go up by that instead. So you always get the best of those three. And because you always get the best of those three, it means if we if we do it for long enough, it will consume the entire known universe, right? Because it will always run faster than it will always go faster than either two and a half% inflation or or earnings because it's always the best of those three every year. Now, it was a really good idea back in the early 2010s because the state pension had fallen back >> and it was just a subtle progressive way of just making it improve, improve, improve a little bit every year, right?

[00:16:32]>> But at some point, you've got to stop doing it, right? The state pension now costs 150 billion pounds a year. The triple lock already adds an extra 15 billion pounds a year onto the cost of the state pension. And if we fast forward to the 2070s, then the state pension in today's money will cost an extra 70 or 80 billion pounds again.

[00:16:52]Right? This is big money. So at some point some government's going to have to say look enough of all this. Yes, we want to keep inflation proofing the state pension, but we need to come up with another mechanism for doing this.

[00:17:04]We can't keep doing the triple lock forever. And that's that's the challenge and that's what to their credit the Tony Blair Institute were among others. I mean others have said it as well. In fact, every politician in quiet and you know in private will acknowledge this truth. It needs to go. But it's kind of a bit of a third rail of British politics. And as soon as you break cover and say, I think I should get rid of the triple lock, everyone says, why do you hate pensioners? You know what? Why do you want us to all live in poverty?

[00:17:28]Right? So, so it's finding that middle ground that's the challenge.

[00:17:31]>> It's one of the most controversial things that I talk about. It does divide. It is that generational debate of you hate pensioners and then young people say we'll never even get a state pension when we're older. Um, so what should replace it? Are we are we staring down the barrel of means tested here?

[00:17:49]>> Well, I I think so there's two questions here. One is I think you could quite easily move to some state pension inflation proofing that was a kind of smooth inflation link. Right? So it's entirely possible for a government to say look we will always look after pensioners. we will work off inflation but you know depending on how government finances are maybe we'll give you a bit extra this year or like in the um in 2022 23 I think it was we suddenly had an 11% spike in inflation then they might say well we're not going to give quite all of that this year because things have gone a bit crazy you know so so I think in principle there's no reason why government couldn't do that but but also you then have this problem that you've got quite a lot of pensioners who are in serious poverty in retirement now and will more of them in the future. And this is my worry is that as home ownership drops off over the next 20 years in retirement, you're going to get more and more pensioners still in rented accommodation. Pensioner poverty is going to increase. At the same time, you have some fortunate pensioners who are high rate taxpayers who have managed to retire with generous final salary pensions. And for them, continuing to throw more and more of the government's welfare budget at uh through the state pension, through this generous triple lock to them seems to me not a good use of resources. So I, you know, to your the latter part of your question, yeah, I think sooner or later we're going to have to look at some form of means testing. And then the challenge with means testing is how you frame it in such a way that people then don't say, well, if you're going to means test the state pension, I just won't bother saving any of my own money because I'm just going to replace benefits that I'm going to get from the state anyway. So, so it's about how you allocate the resources as efficiently as possible in the short term whilst continuing to incentivize people to save their own money for their own private pensions in the long term. And I'm not pretending any of that's easy.

[00:19:41]>> No, not at all. Good luck to the politicians uh the party that is going to turn that one around. Um just very briefly because I've been hearing grumblings uh this week among my personal finance buddies uh the changes to salary sacrifice just you know what's the change how significant is it and what's your views on this one Tom? So I mean it's been a great we know go to my employer you know g I want to give up x% of my salary or my bonus that I'm going to get this year and because it's then not paid to me as earnings there's no national insurance to pay on it and I just get my employer to pay it straight into my pension for me and it's it's you know it's a terrific we and very efficient way of managing your money because everybody wins apart from the tax man I pay less national insurance the employer pays less national insurance if you have a very generous employer such my last employer, they the employer will even give you the national insurance they've saved because like it just means they're no better off, right?

[00:20:38]So, it's a really efficient system. The state, the government have come along and said, "Well, hang on. This is just not fair, right? You you're deliberately circumventing the system. We're going to cap off the amount you can do through this salary sacrifice giving off your income at a maximum of 2,000 a year." So you can still have employer pension contributions going in, but specifically if you go to an employer and say, "Take a bit off my income and add it into my pension, so we'll avoid the national insurance." They'll only allow the first 2,000 of that a year to count. Any more than that, they're going to hit you for the national insurance anyway, even if your employers just paid it into your pension. And they're saying >> this will leave about 75% of basic rate taxpayers unaffected by this change because because they don't give up more than £2,000 a year. I mean, realistically, it is the wealthier end of the earning spectrum. You know, the people who get big bonuses, the people on six figure salaries, they're the ones who've been giving up 10, 20, 50,000 chunks of money to have the employer paid into a pension, and they're the ones who are really going to lose out from this.

[00:21:42]>> So, you are not that bothered by this change?

[00:21:47]>> Um, it's look, it's a disincentive to save. It's going to upset a lot of people. Um, if I were, and I I no longer am. I was in my past job. If I, if I was still in the kind of employment where I could take advantage of the salary sacrifice, I'd be cross about it, right?

[00:22:02]>> Yeah.

[00:22:03]>> You know, um, this I'm also really conscious, you know, we've talked already on this podcast there. The government gives generous tax breaks to pensions. Um, they've got to make choices. Um, I'm I'm acutely conscious of the fiscal position of this country.

[00:22:19]Um, we're in a pretty deep hole right now. So, I can understand why they're doing it.

[00:22:24]>> Doesn't mean I like it.

[00:22:26]>> Yeah, fair. Um, when you add all of this together, what we've spoken about the bill, investment rules, tax changes, what direction is UK pensions policy heading in?

[00:22:38]>> Mix it all up.

[00:22:39]>> What's coming out?

[00:22:40]>> That's a really good question. So, we've got a couple of important reviews going on that we'll report back later this year. One is on state pension age and my instinct is that's going to go up further and faster than is currently the case because that's a really efficient way to save money for the state.

[00:22:55]>> The other is on pensions adequacy. You know, basically what are we doing in the long term to save enough for retirement whether it's through the state or through private pensions. So those are two really important reports coming out.

[00:23:08]Um, and I mean the, you know, spoiler alert, one state pension's probably going to end up going later as I've already said, and the other is we're not saving enough for retirement. And however we go about doing it, we need to save more. And this is really for the for the people in their 30s, 40s, you know, the the younger cohorts meeting in their 20s.

[00:23:28]We need to think about what looks as a sustainable pension system looks like in the long term. But we also need to think about how it interacts with the housing sector, how it interacts with social care. You know, there are some some because because that affects how we save for retirement. So none of this is simple. I think to their credit, the government is trying to do some sensible reviews on this. But uh and you know, everybody's acutely conscious of the cost of living crisis. there's that trade-off between having enough money to spend today and making [clears throat] sure we're putting aside enough money for tomorrow. So, um, politicians have an unfortunate habit of focusing more on the former questions and less on the latter. So, I think those reviews that I've mentioned are going to be really important.

[00:24:13]>> I do want to I don't want to stoke up generational debate. I think that's already there. But just listening to a lot of what you're saying, this isn't going to affect those people, even Tom, dare I say it, like yourself, who's benefited from salary sacrifice and those sorts of things, right? It sort of pulls the rug under the next generations. And you can must feel as a young person, and I am not young, right?

[00:24:36]So I don't include myself in this, but actually a little bitter about this. I just think about student loans. And when you say to people, especially young people, make sure you save into your pension. They go, "Well, we've got we're going to buy a house. We're going to pay off our student loan. Are we ever going to afford to have kids and get married or whatever you might want to do in life?" But there's also another element of of trust in the system. The more and more that we tinker and change and some of these changes are good. Make no bones about it. Some of them are good, but others you think when people tell me on, you know, Tik Tok or get in contact with me and say, "That's it. I'm I'm I'm opting out." You think we're losing trust. Not in just pensions here. I think in institutions generally, but that's not that's for another podcast, Tom. But I do think as as we are we are losing faith. I mean, I actually saw a statistic the other day about how much since the global financial crisis we have in savings compared to what we're investing, the graph has just gone completely the opposite direction. So much more being held in savings. And I do wonder than investing whether that comes down again to trust.

[00:25:37]>> Yeah, I think that's a really good question. Um I think you know you you mentioned the global financial crisis since which time per capita GDP growth sorry bit jargony but you know the amount the economy has grown and how much better off we all feel basically has tracked sideways >> for the last 20 years and I think that's a big part of the problem is that we're just not getting any better off at the moment and you know you compare us to say America you know their their prosperity over the last 20 years has doubled relative to ours. So, so that fixes a lot of problems and I think successive governments have failed to understand how to make the economy grow.

[00:26:19]You know, back in the 80s and 90s things were maybe a bit bit ragged at the edges, but at least the economy was growing fast and we've lost the ability to do that. So, I think that's a big part of it.

[00:26:29]>> But I also think you're right. You know, I would like to see the political parties making credible economic offers, not just vibes based hope over hate guff or whatever, but actual credible economic propositions for the younger generations. And I don't see enough of that, enough of politicians doing the hard yards of saying this [snorts] is how we can create a society where you can get a good job and get paid well.

[00:26:55]Not because the state's introducing a minimum wage, but because employers are competing for your services and the economy is growing and where you can buy a house and where you can save for retirement. And I don't see enough focus on those kind of questions. So it's not surprising that younger cohorts just end up losing trust with the institutions.

[00:27:13]And you know I just also final point I think back 20 25 years ago when we had the pensions commission that created a cross party consensus on how we reformed the pension system that introduced autoenrollment that mandated employers have to pay money into your pension for you and that transformed participation rates in pensions. It's made a huge difference to the number of people saving for retirement.

[00:27:38]you can do these things and you can do it with political consensus and and that creates stability. Um and and and and then people can trust that system and everybody moves on and and I think we need a bit more of that as well.

[00:27:50]>> I always say when people say is there even going to be a state pension when I'm older? I kind of say assume there's not.

[00:28:00]Assume there's not and think about what you can personally do now. So I'm going to ask you what we as individuals, we can't do that that much about growth in the UK, let's be honest, and big macroeconomic issues, but we can do little things to support ourselves as we go on this journey towards retirement.

[00:28:17]So with all of your pensions knowledge, you know, just distill it for us some really key things that we can kind of take away.

[00:28:25]>> So I think you know the most important thing is to have a plan, right? and and then so you know take this and the fact that you're listening to people people are listening to you Georgie means they're probably more inclined to have a plan so that's a good start right >> but it's it's when you just file this away in the two difficult box and so many day-to-day pressures so I mean just as a simple example if you are putting aside less than 10% of your monthly income for the long term if you're not putting aside at least 10% of your monthly income for the long term, you're probably not saving enough. Right now, you can spend 5 minutes with a pension calculator, plug in your salary, plug in your age, plug in when you think you might want to retire, pull the lever, and it will very quickly tell you this is the kind of number you need to be saving every month, right? So, that that could be part of the plan that you formulate, you know, but then also, are you buying your own home? Do you have a plan to own your own home? You know, so what's your what's your trajectory there? What are you doing to build up a deposit for that house? And if you can get to retirement having eliminated that housing cost because you own your own home, so you don't have to pay rent anymore. That's a really important part of the equation. And you know, you get couples who come together and perhaps less so for 20somes, but maybe more for people say in their 40s where they've both individually bought a property and then they decide to just to keep one on as a rental property when they come together. Right?

[00:29:54]that that's been quite a common phenomenon in the past, maybe diminishing so now. So, okay, so you've got a rental property, that's an investment that will generate an income.

[00:30:03]That's part of your plan, right? You know, so uh I moved north. You know, before we started this podcast, George, you and I were talking about that. I I sold up from Bristol and moved to Cumbria, right?

[00:30:14]>> That released some cash because guess what? Property is cheaper in Cumbria than it is in Bristol, right? That, you know, that effectively was part of my plan. So that's what I mean about a plan. There are certain simple >> solutions that are pretty common across everybody, but everybody's own plan and solution will be unique to them. Final observation, any free money your employer offers you in the way of a pension contribution, take it with both hands.

[00:30:38]>> Super Tom, thank you so much. How can people follow your excellent musings?

[00:30:44]>> Uh, Pensions Monkey is probably the best place to go. That's where you'll find me on X and then periodically in the Times.

[00:30:51]um and occasionally other newspapers too.

[00:30:54]>> Thank you so much. If you want to get in touch, you can find us on social or you can email us. And don't forget to hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode.

[00:31:01]Before you go, just a quick reminder that everything you've heard on this podcast is for information education only. It's not personal financial advice. Investing involves risk. And if you're unsure, it's best to speak to a regulated financial adviser. See you next time.