THEY were supposed to be the "silver surfers", the time-rich, cash-rich 60-plus generation who could indulge themselves in their declining years with the cornucopia of delights made available by the magic of the internet. But are some of them falling
off the surfboard and in danger of drowning?
That is the question which has to be asked in light of reports of disturbing over-indebtedness in Scotland over the past five years, in whose depressing statistics the over-60s play an unusually prominent part. The way the game of life used to be played was this: you got into debt when you were young and feckless, worked hard through your middle years to pay it off and then enjoyed yourself as much as you could with what was left over.
But clients of agencies such as the Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) are getting older and poorer, with the proportion of over-60s seeking debt advice doubling in five years. And for the first time since the agency started collecting statistics, the oldies have the highest levels of debt, averaging £29,642.
How has an age group traditionally characterised by its frugality apparently embraced profligacy with such enthusiasm? As usual, there are no straightforward answers. But one of them has to be the ease of access older people have to online banking – a recent Lloyds TSB survey revealed that 70 per cent of over-fifties claim that internet banking is their preferred method of money management because of its round-the-clock convenience.
They are just as keen on online retailing, gambling, travel and financial services. In times past, their shopping experience would have been confined to their town centre. Now they can browse the world. Older people are also seen, in most cases justifiably, as a good credit risk and their age counts in their favour when they are making online purchases.
However, given the wealth of opportunities laid out before them, it is understandable if they sometimes forget that they are on a fixed income for the rest of their lives – something which banks and other lenders sometimes quite conveniently forget as well. That fixed income isn't what it was either, with annuity rates on a long-term downward trend. Over the past decade, a typical pension pot of £100,000 would buy an annual income of around £6,000, or £500 a month – hardly enough to paint the town red on a regular basis. And most people who have left full-time work have few realistic opportunities to increase their income.
At the same time, and especially recently, the main fixed costs that an older person has to factor into budget deliberations – household bills, transport fares and fuel, not to mention medical and insurance costs – have been going only in one direction: skywards.
And there is another phenomenon, a further complication that hasn't impinged on previous generations of older people – the housing crisis and the way it affects their children. With lenders slamming shut the cheap mortgage gates, there is only one place most young people will be able to source a decent deposit, and that is the Bank of Mum and Dad.
Experience dictates that they will feel they are the only people in the world with such overpowering worries, but any sense of shame or embarrassment should be discarded. It's time to put the surfboard in the garage and go back to face-to-face independent advice from a qualified insolvency practitioner or to Citizens Advice.
? Nick Robinson is chairman of Independent Insolvency Practitioners
The full article contains 603 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
