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| Tilley441 of Flickr: frog burns |
Here goes nothing,
right? :)
I'm Jukka, a
30-something guy living in Finland. I am starting this blog to
document my journey in beating the involuntary pension ponzi scheme I
am in. Other motives include wanting to learn more, document and
clarify my ideas, get feedback; to think outloud basicly, and help me
stay my course.
A couple of years
back it occurred to me that even though the Finnish welfare state
takes 25% of my salary as pension insurance payments, I'm not very
likely to see much return on that investment. The main culprit here
is the fact that most of those payments are going to finance the
pensions of the elderly people who are pensioners now. Or in fact,
actually the pension payments to current pensioners actually just
crept above what is gathered from as pension insurance payments. That
sounds like a ponzi to me! Let's check Wikipedia:
"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator, an individual or organization, pays returns to its investors from new capital paid to the operators by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the operator."
Yep, that's a ponzi
right there! It's not getting any better either... The dependency
ratio in Finland will go through the roof for the next half a century
as the big generations (born after WW2) are taking their pensions.
The pension insurance payments are projected to go up and the future
pension payouts are projected to go down.
Also, there are
political risks involved. The age when people get to take their
pensions is frequently being increased. The target pension age for a
currently 30-something is around 70 years already.
In short then, we're
all screwed and it's about to get worse. But most people around me
are doing nothing. Most Finnish people don't save for retirement.
They think they're covered by the state. They are not. They are the
frog in the water that is about to get boiled alive.
My plan to beat this
ponzi is by means of saving and investing. Let's see how it goes.
Wish me luck, I'm going to need it!
