Monday 12 August 2013

Journalists and numeracy

Just spotted this - it's a fairly minor thing, but bugs me.
"...a maximum "lifetime allowance" applies to pensions, limiting the total size of a fund to £1,500m for this tax year (ending April 2014) and down further to £1.25m in the next (2014-2015). "
Seems like a hell of a cut, from £1.5bn to £1.25m...

from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/10233522/Todays-children-will-need-2.4m-pension-pot.html

The whole article is a bit crap to be honest - £2.4m would buy you around (very approximate) £120k of pension, which seems like a hell of a lot more than most people live on while working, let alone in retirement. I suspect they're taking inflation into account, at which point they may be trying to draw attention to the fact that the allowance is decreasing rather than increasing, but they really need to say what assumptions they are making and what that means in today's money. It's just scaremongering