Why I’ll join the silver stampede to cash in a pension

At the beginning of the last decade, a young man who claimed to be my ‘premier banker’ paid me a visit. He was accompanied by his boss, evidently there to assess the junior’s performance. Once upon a time — at least in popular imagination — bank managers were kindly, cautious, long-term advisers, but by the turn of the new century they had become shameless product-pushers with targets to fill, and it was obvious from the body language of both visitors that this poor chap had to sell me something by the end of the call or his job was on the line. So I took his ‘advice’, signed for a stakeholder pension — and never saw either of them again. I’ve been making monthly contributions of £240 (grossed up by the taxman to £300) ever since, thereby accumulating a pot which now claims to be worth £60,000 and promises in due course to turn into a monthly pension, by way of an annuity, of £273.