Words About Things

A recent study by the financial services company Prudential has shown that only 18% of people nearing retirement age feel that they have saved enough money for a comfortable retirement. Of the 1,001 people interviewed for the study 57% said that they would be willing to work past their retirement age in order to receive more money once they did stop working. While most had money saved up in financial investments and current accounts they did not feel that it was enough to maintain the standard of living they had become accustomed to.

Around 25% of people due to retire within the next year said that they would be happy to work for another 5 years in order to save more money. 7% of participants had considered working for an extra 10 years in order to make their retirement years more comfortable. Only 1 in 5 felt that they were financially ready to retire. Vince Smith-Hughes of Prudential said that these figure represent an issue faced by many of retirement age:

“”Working beyond the normal retirement age is already a reality for many people who either have insufficient savings or simply want a greater income when they do come to retire. But for a lot of people planning to retire in the very near future the state retirement age is sacred and their expectation has always been to retire at 65. Once they reach that milestone, regardless of the amount of money they have, they simply do not want to work anymore.”

Around a third of people expect their standard of living to fall once they retire compared to only 12% who expect their retirement to account for a raise in their standard of living. Most of us look forward to our retirement but these figures show that we must focus on preparing financially in order to be relaxed about our futures. Without significant saving we may find that retirement is a struggle when it should be a pleasure.

New figures show that women now gamble almost as much as men. Traditionally gambling was a male pastime but a gradual change has occurred. Now 88% of men have placed a bet and so have 83% of women.

The rise of less traditional forms of online betting such as online bingo has played a big part. The fact that horse betting is more mainstream than ever before is also important. Horse betting is seen as a family day out and is massively popular around the time of the Grand National.

Even games which have been traditionally seen as aimed at men such as online poker and online roulette are being enjoyed by more women than ever before. Sport betting and football betting are even seeing increasing numbers of female betters.

Any idea which country has the highest broadband penetration rate? If you are thinking of the US or the UK then you are way off. In fact they do not even feature within the top 10. The US is actually lagging well behind at 19th place. They might have an awful lot of internet users but a larger percentage are yet to get online.

The top 20 countries are:
01 Bermuda
02 Netherlands
03 Denmark
04 Iceland
05 Switzerland
06 Liechtenstein
07 Monaco
08 Finland
09 South Korea
10 Norway
11 Sweden
12 Hong Kong
13 Luxembourg
14 Canada
15 United Kingdom
16 Belgium
17 France
18 Singapore
19 United States
20 The Faroe Islands

The one place I really didn’t expect to see was Liechtenstein. In fact I have to admit that I had forgotten that it even existed! In fact 10,000 Liechtensteiners have broadband or wifi giving them a broadband penetration rate of 28.1%.

76.9 percent of people in the United Kingdom don’t have wireless broadband or even wired broadband. Makes you wonder what percentage of people have a phone line. In these days of mobile phone some people only have a landline in order to get access to the internet. Perhaps as mobile broadband improves we will start to see the end of the telephone line.