NOS/Bart Kamphuis
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 06:00
Part-time work is popular in the Netherlands. Almost half of the working population (45 percent) does it, and women more than men. The reasons often mentioned are care for children and grandchildren, informal care, health, the need for more free time, or no need for a higher income. A part-time job provides less income, but also has consequences for the accrual of pension.
However, there is a chronic lack of attention to what working less means for retirement later. Seven in ten people who have recently started working less have not found out what this means for their pension, according to research by the Money Wise platform, an initiative of the Ministry of Finance. This study, conducted by I&O Research, involved more than 1,500 Dutch people aged 30 to 67, who work more than 12 hours a week.
Part-time
Pension expert Lisa Brüggen from Netspar gives an example. “If you, as a construction employee, decide to work one day less per week at the age of 32, you will accrue approximately 27,000 euros less pension. In concrete terms, this means that you have approximately 120 euros less net to spend per month after your retirement. This could be the difference between being able to make ends meet and not.”
Christiaan Meijer from Wijzer in Geldzaken: “The focus is often on being able to make ends meet ‘now’, instead of making ends meet after retirement.”
Meijer warns of a disappointing pension for people who decide to work less. Women in particular often decide to work less during their careers. Nearly two-thirds of working women work part-time, compared to 28 percent of men. As a result, women build up much less pension than men and also less than they might think. This means that the Netherlands has the largest pension gap between men and women after Cyprus: more than 40 percent difference.
‘We’ll figure it out’
“Many people do not realize enough that choices made now have financial consequences for later,” says pension expert Lisa Brüggen. “We know from research that a large number of women say they are not financially independent and do not know how they are doing financially outside of the monthly household budget, and certainly not in old age.”
Partners rarely talk to each other about the details of their pension, as can be concluded from the research. They usually know each other’s current income, but almost half do not know how much pension the other has built up.
Nine out of ten couples without an official partnership (marriage or registered partnership) have not arranged anything regarding finances and pensions. People often do not know what it means for their pension if the relationship ends. 75 percent say that ‘they will work things out’ if they break up. According to Wiser in Money, this is too optimistic: many pension disputes concern the division of the pension between divorcing partners.
Money Wise emphasizes that now is the time when you still have influence over your pension assets, so that you also have sufficient income later after reaching your retirement age.
2023-11-07 05:00:01
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