If you have financial worries, it has a major impact on your life. Also on your mental well-being. There are many poignant examples of this. I think that part of the solution lies in having a grip on your finances. If you know where you stand and if you understand how certain financial matters work, that gives you peace of mind. And it gives you the confidence to make good choices. Yet there are only a few people who really have a tight grip on their finances. That is the group that makes Excel spreadsheets or keeps a cash book. When it comes to pensions, the situation is similar. Only a few people stop to think about the question: what income do I have now and how high will that income be when I retire? And the group that also thinks about that in time is even smaller…
See it as your salary
That is what we need to work on with regard to pensions, that we bring the question ‘how much income will I have later?’ to the fore. That pensions are not dismissed as ‘far away’ or as a latent need, but that people include pensions in their decisions in the here and now. It always amazes me that we are all very alert to our income when we negotiate salary, but we hardly pay attention to our pension – what your income will be in the future. That is remarkable to say the least. It is apparently not yet in our system to think like that.
Here and now
Another example of pension in the here and now I see with friends who have children. If they decide to work less to take care of the children, they often contractually reduce the number of hours. While it is better for their pension rights if they first take parental leave. Then the accrual of their pension continues. So immediately reducing the number of hours is at the expense of your pension. If that knowledge were common knowledge, you could make better decisions.
Learned at a young age
I myself learned at a young age that you have to look ahead financially. I come from an entrepreneurial family, my father was a fruit grower. There were years when the harvest was not good. For example, if there had been a heavy hail storm, we did not have a good year financially. My parents were prepared for that and had built up a buffer for these kinds of disappointing years. They also told us about it. As a result, it became clear to me at a young age how important it is to have a grip on your finances.
More targeted and personalized
In my opinion, you can’t start early enough with that financial awareness. How do you deal with risks? How do you learn to think about the consequences of decisions you make in the here and now? Do you understand your finances? I really believe that this needs to be better, earlier and more transparent. That also fits in with Yellowtail Conclusion, where our mission is to improve the quality of the financial lives of consumers. For example, we develop
pension portals for our customers that take visitors on a clear journey through their pension story. We are also doing this increasingly personalized based on personal data and behavioral science, which allows us to help people in an even more targeted way. But then we first have to get people to that pension portal. That will only work if we bring forward thinking about our future income as much as possible so that the step to the pension portal becomes a natural one.
Cultivating financial awareness
The fact that the new pension law is finally coming into effect puts extra pressure for change – and I think that is positive. Many good things have already been set in motion and there will undoubtedly be more initiatives added. Yellowtail Conclusion supports its customers in this and is happy to think along about activating consumers to get started with their pension. At the same time, I also realize that we as Yellowtail Conclusion cannot improve the world on our own. That is why I invite everyone to think along about how we can start ‘cultivating’ financial awareness as early as possible. As far as I am concerned, that path already starts in the classroom. Because as I have experienced myself: what you learn as a youngster, you will always do when you are old.
