Why cutting back on saving is unwise

When times are hard, you need to be saving more than ever. So if you plan to cut back, ditch the takeaways, not your piggy bank, says Tim Bennett.

According to the latest survey from Axa, 75% of households plan to cut back this year as the credit crunch bites. Sounds sensible until the survey then reveals that most are stuck as to whether to cut back by "going out less", or simply reducing the amount they save for their pensions. This is alarmingly muddled thinking. Cutting down on meals out and shopping for the "millions weighed down by high lifestyle costs", as Axa puts it, may feel painful. But abandoning Isas and Sipps instead, just as the property market turns, will prove far more costly.

First off, few dispute that gravity is now reasserting itself on UK house prices the IMF's latest forecast predicts a 30% drop for UK property, while March saw the largest monthly fall in UK house prices since 1992, says the Halifax. This should snap more people out of the delusion that their house will not only provide a place to live, but will also pay for their eventual retirement, when they will free up lots of capital by downsizing.

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.