Retirement Loan Debt On The Increase
The majority of the UK’s population look forward to the time when they will be able to give up the daily grind of dragging themselves out of bed on a morning and trudging into work every day just so they can pay their bills by the end of the month and instead, relax into a comfortable and long retirement, doing all the things they were unable to do whilst they were working and having enough money to be able to afford to do it.
Unfortunately, for many individuals the reality of retirement is likely to be more of a nightmare than a dream, as an ever increasing number of people are entering into retirement with large levels of debt on credit cards, mortgages and personal loans.
A recent report from Key Retirement Solutions, the equity release specialists, estimates that over the next ten years, those individuals in retirement will have loans and credit card balances totalling around £66 billion. The increasing cost of living is one major reason as to why this situation is arising, but also poor investment returns on savings and inadequate pension planning, through a general lack of retirement funding are also large influencing factors.
The survey was conducted on people in the UK aged 55 and over, who were approaching retirement and revealed that more than a third of those interviewed currently had unsecured loan debts of more than £11,000, a further 25 per cent had loan balances of around £9000 and one in five individuals had balances on their credit cards.
A spokesman from Key Retirement Solutions said “As the cost of living is on the up, these figures, even if they are only part reflective of pensioners as a whole, are of real concern.
Retirement should be a time to enjoy yourself after all those years of hard work, yet one in twenty people in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s admit to constantly struggling to keep up with financial commitments or having fallen into arrears.
The cost of living for the elderly has surpassed inflation over the past decade and therefore it is more important than ever that consumers are aware of the dangers of approaching retirement with such large amounts of debt.”
