Every pensioner's ultimate goal should be to die with nothing

The financial services industry needs to help pensioners decumulate their wealth. Forget preserving capital; the aim should be to spend it so you die the day before it runs out.

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There's no point dying with a massive pension pot

When I go to schools to talk to children about money I tell them to think of the sums they put into their bank accounts as shape-shifting time machines. Shape-shifting because the first miracle of money is the way in which the global system of trust in the current fiat system means that it can be used to "middleman" anything into anything.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.