Proactive risk management in the personal pensions market: Buy a pub and a gun

Saving for a pension often seems to be a mugs game given minimal investment returns and falling annuity rates (although pension providers probably still continue to do quite nicely).

Of course there are alternatives, although the often favoured strategy of using the family home as an alternative to a personal pension fund seems a little misguided. Notwithstanding all the periodic hyperbole residential property is not a particularly good investment. At best it probably keeps in step with the cost of living - but little more. Moreover, unlike pension fund investors house-owners no longer get any tax relief.

Investors could try something more exotic. You could always buy a pub. One local resident disillusioned with the current UK private pensions regime decided to go down this particular route. He also bought a gun to protect his investment.

“I lost faith in pensions so I bought a pub for the value of the property and business carried on in it,” he says. However we all know that ownership is only guaranteed by laws, and if laws break down, you can be dispossessed by anyone with enough force. So that’s why I bought a gun.”