Christina Loach, 34, reveals no one talked to her about pensions when she was cutting hair – but now she is full of fear about the future
In our Pension Diaries series, we speak to people of all ages in the UK to find out how much or how little they have saved for retirement and the realities of putting money aside for your future.
Today, we talk to Christina Loach, 34, a married mum-of-three who lives in Essex, who has been working in hairdressing since she left school at the age of 16.
She says pensions “were never a thing” in the world of hairdressing and no one ever mentioned them to her. She now works for herself as a self employed hairdresser and says she still does not have a pension as it is hard to find any spare cash when you have a young family.
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How long have you been a hairdresser?
I went straight into a hairdressing apprenticeship after finishing school at 16. After qualifying, I worked in a couple of different salons and then I had my eldest son Rocco when I was quite young at 19, so everything fell by the wayside for a while.
Christina Loach left school at 16 to start a hairdressing apprenticeship and worked in a few different salons before becoming self-employed
I went back to hairdressing part-time for a while and then I moved from up north to down south to be with my partner and had my second baby in an area where I hadn’t grown a client base, so I would have had to start from scratch. Because I had just had a new baby, I didn’t want to be in a salon all day so I decided to go self-employed.
The beauty of being a hairdresser is that you can pick it up and take it anywhere as it is a skill you build on with experience and you are not tied to a particular place.
Why have you never had a pension?
Getting a pension is a thing that was never mentioned while I was hairdressing. It was something I never thought of and then it got to the point where I knew about pensions, but couldn’t afford to put money into one.
When I was an apprentice, the hours I was doing were not even minimum wage. Pensions were never spoken about when I was working in salons and there certainly did not seem to be any sort of scheme where an employer made a contribution.
I now have three children – Rocco, 14, Bella, 10 and Rosalie, five. At some point, the law changed so it became compulsory to enrol into a pension, but by that point, I wasn’t working in a salon.
I have no pension pot at all and I have never started saving into one. My husband Paul, who is an air conditioning engineer, has a pension with his company. It is just a bog standard one, but at least one of us has a pension.
What is your biggest barrier to saving for a pension?
My biggest barrier to having a pension is that I can’t spare and justify the money when I have three young children. There only ever seems to be enough money to survive the daily grind.
Having a child young also stopped me progressing in my career and becoming a higher earning hairdresser. It is only now I am coming out of the other side and making decent money as a hairdresser. But I have now got more children.
Christina, with her youngest daughter Rosalie, says it is hard saving money aside for a pension with young children
We are actually now both earning decent salaries and my husband does a lot of overtime. Some months, we can earn as much as £6,000 before tax. But our mortgage is £2,000 and we have got a lot of debt on credit cards so pay out a lot every month.
I now do hairdressing from home and we converted the garage into my salon. But we had to take out a loan to do that so I could work from home and that is one of the things we are paying off.
Pensions take a back seat in my mind as we are more worried about today rather than tomorrow. I do worry about tomorrow as well, but I get overwhelmed by today. I can’t afford to pay into a pension because all our money gets swallowed up.
What is your fear about not having a pension?
Thinking about the future and having no pension hugely worries me, especially with the current economic climate and everything the Government is doing. I think families like us, who are middle earners, are going to get more and more squeezed.
I am also aware that I can’t work as a hairdresser forever as I suffer from joint problems and doctors are checking to see if I have some form of arthritis. With hairdressing, you are on your feet all day so it is not good if your health starts to deteriorate.
Christina loves hairdressing but is worried she will not be able to do it forever as she has joint problems which can make the job difficult
My mum is always telling me to make sure I have a pension as she doesn’t want me to make the same mistakes she did and wants me to think about a pension now while I am young.
My mum worked in the NHS for 30 years and is still working there. The NHS has a great pension, but my mum did not pay into it so now she will have to work until she is a lot older because she hasn’t paid into a pension for long enough. She really regrets not starting paying into her NHS pension earlier and will now need to work until 70 just to get by.
What is your biggest pension regret?
I wish I had been taught more about pensions when I was younger, but I don’t really see how I could have done anything different as there wasn’t really a point where I could have afforded to pay into one and I have never had an employer paying into one.
Even now when we are doing a lot better, I haven’t set up a pension as it would only be me paying into it – there would be no employer contribution.
However, I have recently set up a Vanguard stocks and shares ISA and I put £100 into it every month, which is a stretch, but it makes me feel better knowing I am putting some money away for the future. It is a target retirement fund and gets more conservative the closer you get to retirement, so at least that is something.