Time to come up with a plan for the bingo years

I can tell you what I will be having for breakfast, lunch and dinner four days from now and Sky Plus means I will never miss my favourite programmes. But this is as far as my planning goes.

As I keep telling my ashen-faced nearest and dearest, life is so much more fun when you don’t have the foggiest what it is around the corner.

The one area where I do fall down miserably on is planning for my own future, but it seems I am not alone.

Accountants and others with nifty financial products to sell, often paint a gloomy picture of what lies ahead for millions of workers who have not given a minute’s thought to how they will see out their retirement. They are right of course.

For all the reasons we already know – an ageing population, the increasing cost of living and a rapidly mounting public debt – the British workforce is being forced to save for its twilight years more than at any time before in history.

The Government introduced the workplace pension scheme several years ago in response to growing concerns about the increasing number of those claiming the statutory state pension, a figure which will only increase.

My own approach is straight out of the King Canute handbook, although I am not sure whether supernatural powers will help me or millions of others who have allowed apathy to triumph.

There seems to be a thriving cottage industry for surveys and the latest suggests that a quarter of those approaching retirement say they cannot afford to head for the allotment just yet. This is a worrying statistic because if baby boomers – arguably the most affluent generation in living memory – are struggling to retire, then what hope is for those who are paying off student debt well into their 30s?

Many of us are resigned to working into our 70s, which is fine when you are 30 years away and not giving any thought to age-induced lethargy.

At the sobering age of 39 and with two children to consider, I have finally started taking my future a bit more seriously, but the reality is that I have just three decades in which to set myself up for years of bingo and daytime television.

I’d better come up with a plan.