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The Retirement Newsletter: Understanding pension gobbledegook
Welcome
Welcome to issue -53, Understanding Pension Gobbledegook — what does it all mean?
Pension gobbledegook
We all have jargon in our lives.
In my work, we use a lot of jargon to get across complex ideas and concepts. Most professions are guilty of using jargon or ‘in-house’ terms. It shows that you know what you are talking about and are part of the “in-crowd”.
One of my favourite pieces of jargon is in Medicine, where the doctor cannot say they don’t know the cause of a particular complaint or illness but instead refer to it as idiopathic. Why not say you don’t know?
Jargon can be confusing and is sometimes used to obfuscate what is happening. It can be discriminatory.
When my pension started, it was jargon free. You paid your contribution, and for each year you paid in, you got 1/80 of your final salary as the pension. Easy. Then it was replaced with something I didn’t understand and which came with new jargon.
So, let’s look at my top ten examples of jargon in the pension industry.
