Could you get by on just £27 a month of disposable income?

Marsden said, "Give us yer lolly...."

"People aged 55 to 64 are in the worst position: they have an average income of £1,359 "

That's pretty stupid! at 65 they'll get a pension of less than £600 a month and that will make them better off?? How do their outgoings reduce??

Who keeps churning out this endless twaddle?

COB

"The insurer estimates that the average homeowner has nearly £250,000 of equity in their property which they could access."

At 65 you'd be lucky to get a third of the value of your property as Equity Release so to get access to £250k your property would have to be worth £750k (duh) hardly an "average homeowner" !!

Twaddle!

COB

''People aged 55 and over have an average of just £27 a month in disposable income, forcing many to dip into their savings or cut back in order to prevent them falling into the red''

That is the figure that they have excluding any money that they have saved and more importantly continue to save, invest or pay premiums with.

I also only have £27 a month in disposable income! (I conveniently forgot to allow for the fact that I stick 1k a month in the bank, 1k a month invested in the stock market plus hundreds of pounds a month insuring myself ).

Boo Hoo. Poor me... I can hardly make ends meet. I think I will go and play a mournful tune on my Stradivarius violin. I don't know how I will afford to get it restrung....oh yeah, wait a second.... that's what my savings are for!

''Marsden said that younger people should tackle under-saving now and increase the amount of money they put away for old age''

Now there's a surprise position for someone at Aviva to take!!!! No wonder they commissioned the report.

Finally.... ''The insurer estimates that the average homeowner has nearly £250,000 of equity in their property which they could access''.

Great! Hardly the 'skid row' scenario portrayed by the headline then. Asset rich, cash poor - then start to liquidate assets. It is how the system works.

With 81% of over 55's owning their own home, they will have seen an increase in value of well over 300% totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds. They will not be 'poor' as I fear today's younger workers will be.

This crap is just propaganda to brainwash the gullible into fooling away the only bit of security they have.

When I retired I was bombarded by insurance companies imploring me to take their money. The only way I could stop the letters coming was to phone their head offices and tell them, in no uncertain terms, that I never asked for their money, I don't want their money, and I don't need their money, and furthermore, to take my personal details off their databases because no matter how hard they try they will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, get their greedy hands on my house.

I live quite frugally, but I don't care how much I will have to scrimp and save. Nobody, but nobody is going to con me into giving up possession of my property, after working all hours God sent to get it.

I say "con" because I believe these equity release schemes are a con: Firstly, the valuation they make will fall short of the current price you could expect to get if you sold on the open market. Secondly, they cover their backs by a legally binding contract in the event that should the equity they hold in the property become worth less than the capital outstanding on the loan, they can use whatever means they think fit to recover the shortfall.

Imagine only £27 a month -

Thanks to the regulators 'inappropriate' actions, some ARM investors would like to have that much!

Once someone turns 55, they will typically earn an income of £472,224 in their remaining years of employment and retirement. If they retire at 65 that equates to an annual income of £47,222 (approx) whereas they have an average income of £1,359 but monthly outgoings of £1,409. How come?

People will generally spend what they earn/receive and perhaps a bit more. Also like others have said some of the outgoings will invariably go on savings and the like. Aviva are NEVER going to publish a report stating a lot of pensioners are living a comfortable retirement!

Aren't the purpose of savings to be there,ready to be "raided" when needed? There is not much point in saving for the sake of saving.The pensioners in trouble are not those who are raiding their savings but those who have no savings to raid.

B nelson...I think you may have misunderstood the income figure. The £472,224 figure mentioned here is referred to as"remaining years of employment and retirement." That would mean not only income from employment from age 55 to 65 but also income from pensions from retirement to death.

If the average home has a value of £236,000 including ? 000s in mortgage debt how on earth can the average home owner have £250,000 in equity in his/her home. This really is a poor quality article!

Absolute rubbish ...