The terrifying prospect of an extended old age

People are living longer. That sounds like good news, says Merryn Somerset Webb, but very few people have made proper financial plans for their retirement. And the government certainly hasn’t.

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Make sure you have enough money to enjoy your extended golden years
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Is the rise in life expectancy in the West coming to an end? If you look at the data it seems to suggest that it is. In March this year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced something depressing: a slight fall in life expectancy for pensioners six months for women and four for men.

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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.