Household financial decision making: Qualitative research with couples

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Summary
Even older couples discussed retirement only occasionally, and few people had been active in 
making provision for retirement. A handful of people interviewed held individual personal pensions, 
typically the result of more general financial conversations with advisers, be they professional or 
more informal advisers. Non-state pensions, where held, were usually workplace pensions that the 
individual had accepted when offered by the employer, rather than the individual or couple having 
selected them proactively. Membership of a workplace scheme was typically the result of individual, 
rather than household-level decision making; therefore the workplace is likely to be the most 
appropriate space in which to communicate information about pensions, particularly automatic 
enrolment. While discussions about pension policy developments could still occur at home, such as 
when beta partners look to their partner for guidance, giving individuals the relevant information 
at work is likely to be the most effective starting point to engaging with pension products and 
stimulating decision making.
Couples saw retirement planning as a process involving long-term decisions and long-term 
consequences: no immediate or tangible benefit was recognised as a result of beginning to 
contribute to a pension. Consequently, it could be difficult for momentum to build in the same way 
as it did for other financial decisions. Moreover, while financial decisions were typically instigated by 
triggers, few triggers appeared to create engagement with, or prompt decisions about, retirement 
provision or pensions. These triggers appeared too weak, or too long-term in nature, to instigate 
discussions of, or decisions about, retirement planning. Few people felt truly confident about their 
finances, and pensions-related decision making was typically unfamiliar: pensions felt like an 
unknown to many.
To overcome the difficulty of engaging with pension products, the potential positive outcomes of 
pension saving could be conveyed more effectively by leveraging life triggers. For example, linking 
pension saving to providing for children may prompt active decision making.
In addition, emphasising the immediate protection that beginning to save into a pension could 
provide, may go some way to addressing the lack of tangibility and feedback that can often inhibit 
the decision to save in a pension.