GM

Some pension experience for the younger plebs thinking of starting a private pension.

My wife started a private pension 25 years ago. She paid in a fixed monthly amount matched by her employer.

After 25 years it matured, my wife was given the option to re-invest, but being Bitcoiners, we decided to cash out to become self sovereign.

If we include the matched employer contributions, the pension has lost money. However on just my wife’s contribution, it has made, after 24% capital gains tax, about 60% gain in total.

However, as inflation has caused at least 50% loss of value over 25 years, then in absolute terms it has lost money.

Next, pension companies, like banks don’t like giving you your money. Despite the payout date being the 15th April, we only received the money after a lot of hassle and threats of issuing a wind up order to the company.

We received the money in the bank yesterday.

What seemed like a significant amount of money to my wife when she started the pension has turned into a relatively insignificant payout today. We are putting two thirds of the payout into Bitcoin and will be using the remainder to pay bills and for my wife to treat herself to a spa day or something similar.

This is the reality of the fiat world.