YOU HAVE YOUR SAY

EVERY week, Money Mail receives hundreds of your letters and emails about our stories. Here are some from our recent story about how pensioners have been left in crippling debt after the Government axed plans to let savers cash in annuities.

IF YOU want to see what kind of Government we have, just look at how it treats children and the elderly. We have the second highest child poverty rate among the developed nations, and now this humiliation of pensioners. Absolutely shocking. T. B., Leeds.

ANNUITIES are a honeypot for insurance companies. They pay a pittance each month and keep the rest when you die.

Why do you think they kicked up a fuss and got the Government to cave in? They say an annuity is a guaranteed income for life, but the only thing you’re guaranteed is to be ripped off. A. L., London.

AS PER usual, the Government has over-complicated the issue. All it had to do was ask insurers to buy back the annuity at the original price minus a reasonable fee. M. L., Malta.

WHILE I feel sorry for the people in debt after trusting our Government, why did they spend the money before they were certain they could sell back their annuity? The saying ‘don’t count your chickens’ springs to mind. J. F., Horsham, W. Sussex.

MY WIFE was offered a deal to have her pension investment as a lump sum because it was less than £10,000.

She said ‘Yes’ because to get that amount of money back from an annuity she would have to live until she was 89, by which time it would be worthless. C. O., Northampton.

THE real crime is that you can save £60,000 for an annuity and get a return of only £45 a week.

We’re all slaves of successive governments who have failed to tackle the problem of good pension provision. S. F., Gravesend, Kent.

SPENDING money you don’t have is a high-risk policy. The hard fact is the two insurance companies concerned were prepared to take part in the initiative and warned people they might get back a lot less than they might expect. The Government was wise to pull it. A. T., London.

I DON’T think you can blame the Government. Imagine if I’m told I’m getting a pay rise and I go on a spending spree before I have the money in my hand — and then I’m told I won’t get the extra cash.

Who should I blame: the company or myself? A. D., Pontefract, W. Yorks.