Household financial decision making: Qualitative research with couples

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Decision-making typologies
3.4.4 
Continued
Sarah has a frozen workplace pension from a previous job but is not contributing to a pension 
currently. Ryan has no non-state pension provision and does not see a point where he will stop 
working, if he manages to have a successful career in music. He hopes to have royalties and 
investments to live off, if he does stop working.
Sarah feels she gives pensions and health insurance the most thought. She tries to have a long-
term plan, but feels that this is difficult. While they do not discuss pensions regularly, Sarah is 
aware that with every year that passes, she has less time to plan for their retirement. However, 
she feels that she has other priorities at the moment which must be dealt with first.
‘I can get quite anal about it. I try and have a long-term plan but it is a bit hard at the moment 
financially. I am the one that is always thinking about pensions, thinking about health 
insurance whilst also we are trying to manage the day-to-day stuff.’
(Sarah)

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Retirement decision making
4 Retirement decision making
This chapter discusses the provision that individuals and couples had in place for retirement, and the 
discussion and conscious decision making that had fed into these plans. It also identifies possible 
barriers to engagement with retirement planning and different types of inertia, noting the relevance 
of some of the principles of behavioural economics to pension planning. Finally, the chapter 
discusses the three types’ likely reactions to automatic enrolment.
4.1 
Plans in place for retirement
Most couples had only a vague vision of their life in retirement, and were not planning for it actively. 
While some spoke about the sort of place where they would like to live and the way they might 
spend their time, none talked spontaneously about the income they would have. 
The couples we interviewed tended not to recognise decisions about pensions (for example, 
deciding to increase or decrease the amounts they contributed to non-State pension schemes) 
as being financially ‘significant’ to them. These decisions were not generally associated with 
household finances in the same way as taking out an investment, or buying a financial product like 
income protection or life insurance. In some cases, couples only recalled these decisions when the 
interviewer asked about them directly.