[mattjenner]

It's free money - however you look at it. Any government backing secures decades of contributions. Payments are often matched by an employer as a benefit. Contributions are pre-tax, thus saving real money. It's locked away, which means you can't spend it!

Not getting a pension, of some kind, seems way riskier than living only with money in the immediate.

As always, the trick is:

1. Compound interest 2. Long-term 3. Diversify investments 4. Maintain control and awareness 5. Compound interest

It's a compound sandwich.

[harryvederci]

Thanks for your response. I guess it boils down to the fact that I just don't get most of this stuff, so any financial decisions I have to make become a thing of trust / hoping things will be alright. Let someone else handle it, it'll be fine. I'm OK with that most of the time. I can sit in a taxi and relax, I'm not checking if the driver is doing the right thing. But that's for a short drive, not a 30+ year investment that will be a huge factor in how my life will be when I'm old. It's a bit harder to take the "sit back and enjoy the ride" approach there.

Investing in houses would at least be something physical. I can touch a house, I can see if it's still in a good state. I can verify it myself. I'm never going to know enough about finance to verify that for a pension scheme.

Maybe I'm taking too much of a binary approach here. I may end up doing both, but the stock market thing still feels like economic gambling voodoo to me.