My dad told me a story the other day.  But before I tell you this story it’s important I tell you a little bit about my Dad.  He was born and bred in the East end of London and worked as a Stevedore (or docker) for a large proportion of his life.  He taught me how to play chess, helped me understand the importance of education and remains a big inspiration in my life.

The last time I saw him we were talking and he mentioned that he had seen an ‘advert for pensions’ recently on the TV.  We continued to talk and I realised he was talking about the recent adverts explaining Auto Enrolment (if you’ve not seen it you can see it here).

We were then talking about my concern that many people may decide to ‘opt out’ of any scheme which has been set up on their behalf and therefore do not start to save for a more secure financial future…..and then my Dad started telling me his story:-

“When I was just starting out in work saving for my old age was the last thing in my mind. Every day after work all the dockers went to the pub.  One day I was in the pub and noticed a table with some retired ex-dockers sitting on a table.”

“I noticed that if we were in there for a few hours, the blokes on this table would spend hours sitting over the same pint of beer.  If they did order another pint, I noticed that when they approached the bar they were counting the pennies to check whether they could afford to buy another pint.”

“I was curious about this and the next time I was in the pub I walked over to the table and offered to buy them a drink.  A couple of them declined, but a couple of them said yes so I popped to the bar and bought them a beer.”

“When I’d got the beers I took them back to the table, sat down and started having a chat.  One of the guys I’d bought the beer for told me that now he had finished work the only income he had was his state pension.  This was why he came into the pub every day, sat over the same pint of beer for hours on end and had to really think about whether he could afford that second pint of the day.”

“The next day I was thinking about that bloke and I realised….I didn’t want to be in that position when I got older.  That’s the day I decided to not spend all of my money every month and start to save a little bit so that I’d be able to have a decent lifestyle when I decide to stop work when I’m older.”

My Dad is still working now and continues with this habit.  He still puts a little bit of money away for when he eventually decides to stop work which means that he will have more choices in his retirement that the gentleman he met in that pub all those years ago.

This raises a question.  How do we make people understand the importance of saving for their retirement?  I believe that auto enrolment will help, so will advertising the availability of these changes.  However one thing we could do is learn lessons from our past generations (both from where they have got things right…but also from their mistakes) and start telling stories which explain the ‘real life’ impact of deciding to save for retirement…or not.