Pre-pension touring and financial illiteracy

A cautionary tale.

Originally published elsewhere for ‘debt awareness week’, which occurs in March; updated and migrated to Substack.

I know of bands and artists touring into their sixties and doing it for the love of it. I also know of some that will be doing it for the money. Of course, some will be doing it for love and for money, and I imagine they’re in the majority and perhaps that’s the sweet spot.

If you love it, wonderful, but if you don’t and you’re actually singing for your supper, not so wonderful at all. I’m sure you’re aware, but just in case you’re not, many musicians end up broke, or if not broke, then just about getting by. Although a number of them eventually find gainful employment, hoping to become financially secure in preparation for those fast approaching twilight years, they may leave it too late

I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person, but seemingly lacking in common sense. When I got my first mortgage, it lasted for 25 years. During the whole of that quarter of a century, I never once renegotiated the deal, because I had no idea that renegotiation was an option. The rate fluctuated wildly on what's known as an SVR, a 'standard variable rate', set by the mortgage lenders.

Under Thatcher and Lawson - what a double act - in the early 90s interest rates more or less doubled in just over 18 months, soaring to 15.4%.

My home was just a small, one-bedroom flat, but stacked by that mortgage hike, my outgoings came to far exceed my income. To compound this, a massive, unexpected bill arrived. My band had not been registered for VAT but had been erroneously receiving VAT payments. Something like that. Unsurprisingly, I didn't take any notice at the time. Like the ‘lazy mouse’ in the Ricky Gervais sketch, I was blithely ‘…running around in the sun, having a bite from a berry, throwing the rest away. There was loads! It was never gonna run out!’

Well to tweak that, I wasn’t at all lazy, so let’s just call me ‘deluded mouse’. Incorrectly, I’d been thinking that success would last, and I’d be making albums and having hits until the twelfth, or even the thirteenth, of never. Unlike Gervais’ ‘industrious mouse’, I hadn’t thought to freeze-dry any berries.

Deluded mouse, in full swing.

I was eventually called to a meeting with the HMRC in a depressing, sub-brutalist building in Winchmore Hill, North London. The advisor, and I use the term very loosely, looked at my income / outgoings sheet and remarked that, in those pre-Internet days of expensive landline calls, I was spending too much time on the phone. It was humiliating, not helpful. They instructed me that I’d need to sell my flat to raise funds to pay what I owed. I protested that the property was in negative equity, but it seemed that wasn't their problem.

Of course, I’m not tarring all individuals within them with the same brush, but institutions such as the HMRC - and the NHS for that matter - seem to attract their fair share of sadists. The interests section of a potential employee’s CV might well resemble this;

• Gardening

• Netflix

• Making other people feel small

• Baking artisan bread

Thanks to a good, good, friend I landed a proper job, which was miraculous, because the odd jobs showing on my CV from before my time in All About Eve, weren't cutting any mustard. My financial rehabilitation came in the form of office work. I was fortunate in that 95% of my office colleagues were warm and decent human beings, a number of whom I’m still in touch with. In fact, a small number of those good humans are friends who are now with me for the long haul.

Importantly, the rehabilitation was far more than financial. The routine, and the friends I made, grounded me, giving me something substantial to grasp as the last unspectacular waves of my experience in the music business ebbed away.

Slowly, very slowly, I paid off my debt and held on to my home by the skin of my overlapping teeth. But where was my common sense? Why hadn't anybody told me I'd been making a right royal mess of adulting?

And so with retirement age now looming in just under five years, am I prepared? Of course not. There wasn't a pension fund being paid into during my years in music and self-employment, just the usual NI contributions. Above State Pension, there'll be an annual sum of around the £3,000 mark, (and that’s not a typo), thanks to my seven or so years working in Higher Education. From the age of 67, I’m going to be living on a maximum of £278 a week.

I can be frugal, certainly, but what happens when the boiler breaks down or the roof springs a leak? Remember Coronation Street back when it wasn’t trying too hard? Remember when Ken Barlow had to get a job collecting trolleys in a supermarket car park? Let that be a lesson to us all.

William Roache, (who plays Ken Barlow), in a recycling campaign.

On the off chance that you share similarly low levels of common sense with me, perhaps think about this. Those kids at school who said they weren't doing any revision for their exams, but then got A grades? They were actually revising. So, while we folk with little common sense have been merrily wandering about seeing heaven in wildflowers, others have been sensibly feathering their nests, as we should also have been doing.

So if you’re going to see a heritage act live, I hope that their love/money balance is healthy, because I think an audience can tell when someone is going through the motions.

I still get offers to play live, ludicrously lucrative ones at that, but at this moment, I can’t take them up. The idea of ‘performing’ petrifies me. Things may change, but it’s doubtful, so right now it really would be just for the money, and so I’m not going to insult you with any play-acting.

I still love to write and record music, and there’s not an atom of pretence required for that. So, for now, that’s what I’ll continue to do.

But back to thinking about pensions; it’s boring, but essential. Keeping track of your mortgage rates, (if you're fortunate enough to be on the housing ladder), is also boring, but essential. And so if you’re on track for a retirement where you can blast the heating through the coldest of the winter months, well, deluded mouse salutes industrious mouse!

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Notes & Links

Advice on mortgage managing, and more, can be found on the moneysavingexpert website.

Take a deep breath and check your state pension forecast

Ricky Gervais’ Industrious Mouse and Lazy Mouse

Yes, financial illiteracy is real. Test your level here