Photo by Federico Giampieri on Unsplash
I'm always incredibly boring with the young people in my family, saying, at some point in the conversation, "what are you doing about your pension?" Especially if it's someone I haven't seen in a long time.
I have a cheek, really, a pension never made any sense to me until I reached forty. That was the first age where I was able to imagine an answer to that question that pension advisers always ask, "what sort of income do you want when you retire?"
I never had a clue. Pensions were that thing that was last on the agenda at union meetings, and my prompt to leave. I guess it was other people's, too, that's why it was the last item.
Fortunately for me, there were unions and generations before me who had had some insight into what life was like beyond State Retirement Age and had negotiated terms.
The young people have learned to read the signs and know to move away when they can see the pension question coming or divert me with an enquiry about knitting as they know that will keep me happy for hours, imparting useless facts like "there can be thirty thousand stitches in a pair of socks."
Or maybe they telegraph each other with messages, "Shani's in town, have your answer to the pension question ready." Perhaps they text a little pre-agreed emoji or even pass on the alert to each other over a beer in the pub after work on a Friday evening.
Sometimes, if they walk into the kitchen unawares through the back door and see me sitting at the table, they nod their head and say a cheery "hello" and keep walking straight through the door to the rest of the house without even breaking their stride. Maybe they already know how many stitches are in a pair of socks.
It's got worse since I found out about crypto, they spot that glint in my eye and know I'm going to start talking blockchain. Sometimes, they're kind and humour me (never ask me a question, though, that will be your downfall), and sometimes they remember that they have to see a man about a dog and they'll catch me later and have a nice evening.
I don't mind, though, they're lovely young people and anyway, here's the grandchildren coming along, full of curiosity and fascinated by self-striping yarn and circular needles and magic loop. "Can I learn?" is theirs and my favourite question.
If, by some unlikely chance, one of them were to ask me about pensions and saving for the future, I'd be saying: look at how you can build your stack of EDS tokens over the next twenty years and get yourself a passive HIVE income.
I'd say: there's a new way of accumulating EDS by delegating to @eds-vote. I'd be telling them that the benefits are a 4%-5% return on your delegation, paid in EDS tokens, that accounts holding more than 100 EDS receive a variable upvote from @eds-vote and that the APY on EDS is currently over 30% paid weekly in liquid HIVE.
Before you know where you are, all those teeny tinies, who already know the names of the all different varieties of tropical fish in their grandad's aquarium, will be signed up to the 365 Savings Challenge, asking any available grown up hoping for a quiet life for jobs for pennies and raking in their EDS tokens.
They're cuter than Shirley Temple, those young'uns.
Three things newbies should do in their first week and, for most things, forever afterwards!
