[UK] Pensioners face 'poverty-ridden retirement'

from Monsters and Critics

Fourteen per cent of all pensioners are existing on under £5,000 each year, a report by investment firm Prudential has claimed.

Publishing its bi-annual retirement savings monitor, Prudential shows that the 14 per cent of retirees receiving the basic pension rate of £4,381 per annum are being forced to make cutbacks in their everyday spending in attempts to remain solvent.

Belt-tightening when it comes to leisure activities and grocery and clothing purchases appears to be the result of the low levels of income faced by the 1.4 million pensioners receiving under £5,000, which after bills, council tax and rent is reduced to an average of £3,092 per annum.

'How many of us could truly say that we could manage on what works out to be just £8.49 a day?' asked Angus Macaiver, director of Prudential UK.

'What’s more, this struggle isn’t just for a couple of years. Retirement is now roughly 25 years long for the average person, but who wants to spend what’s nearly a third of their life struggling by on less than a ‘tenner’ a day?'

Many pensioners have responded to falling levels of income by returning to work, borrowing from friends or family or dipping into assets set aside for their children.

Five per cent have even turned to gambling, while the situation is so severe for one in a hundred that crime is the only way out, the report indicates.