The money pages of the weekend papers are often pretty miserable. But one of this week’s pieces was even more miserable than usual. In the Financial Times, Claer Barrett told us about Martin, a 59-year-old forced into early retirement after developing a disability. He checked up on the value of his pension in June 2021 and found it was worth £200,000. He checked again in October 2023 and that number was £134,000. A third was gone. What on earth, you might ask, went wrong?
The answer, says Barrett, is “lifestyling”, a system used by pension-fund managers to cut the risk in portfolios as their beneficiaries age. When you are young, your manager
