Seven hundred post-war “baby boomers” will turn 65 in Bermuda this year but how many of them will be able to enjoy the retirement they expected? Sam Strangeways looks at some of the pitfalls facing pensioners and finds out why so many of the Island’s older residents are putting their leisure plans on hold.When Mark Selley starting delivering newspapers, aged seven, retirement was undoubtedly the last thing on his mind.Still, the 58-year-old insists, he had no choice but to hand over a small portion of the one pound and five shillings he picked up each week from his first job for the government’s “pension plan”.More than half a century later, self-employed Mr Selley, who suffered a stroke 20 years ago which left him paralysed on his left side, continues to work with no end in sight.When he reaches 65 in September 2017, he should be able to start claiming back the social insurance contributions he has made all his working life.But he will not be able to live on the benefit he expects to pick up, he says, not even combined with the income from an occupational pension plan he has had to pay into, in law, for more than ten years.“No way!” he replies emphatically when asked if he’ll quit his marine business in six years. “I’m not that type of person anyway but there is no way in this economy that I could afford to stop working.“Most people I have contact with can’t afford to stop. It’s not going to be better [in six years]. It’s going to be worse.”Mr Selley’s gloomy forecast is shared by many, including the actuaries who have assessed Bermuda’s public pension pot.They estimate that the Contributory Pensions Fund may not be enough to provide benefits to the thousands of people due to reach retirement over the next two decades.This year sees the first cohort of the post-war “baby boomers” turn 65 some 700 people expected to make a claim for benefits, compared to 276 in 2010.The Department of Social Insurance says it is the largest number of new pensioners in Bermuda’s history and “each year, over the next 20 years, we anticipate equal or greater numbers”.The expected 150 percent increase in the number of claimants comes as the working population paying social insurance into the fund decreases, due to falling birth rates and rising unemployment.It’s a problem faced by developed countries all over the world but that doesn’t make it any easier for Mr Selley, chairman of Bermuda Stroke and Family Support Association, and others like him.In Bermuda, unlike in places such as the UK and Canada, the majority of their pension is likely to be swallowed up by the ever-rising cost of health insurance.Government’s recently-published National Health Plan acknowledges this and proposes to change the way health care is funded, basing contributions on ability to pay though a detailed description of how this would work has yet to be released.The minimum monthly state pension here for a senior who has paid 100 percent of their social insurance contributions is just under $952 not enough to pay for a private major medical plan.Mr Selley’s health insurance costs him $1,200 per month, though he will eventually qualify for FutureCare, Government’s scheme for seniors, which costs $635 a month for those in phases two and three of the scheme.The Smith’s resident has poor circulation, needs a stick to move around due to his partial paralysis and takes a lot of prescription medication.Mr Selley wants to work past retirement age, in part, he says, for his “own sanity”. But he admits he also has to consider: “How am I going to be able to afford to live the rest of my life?”That’s a question constantly on the mind of Southampton grandmother Evelyn*.The 80-year-old lives with her daughter and grandson, while her “baby boomer” son Andrew*, who turned 65 in January, is in the apartment downstairs.Evelyn worked in a variety of jobs, some of them low-paying, “never sitting down”, until the age of 78. But she still has a mortgage to pay off and can’t charge her son rent since “he has no money, it’s as simple as that”.Andrew has been blind for more than 30 years and only able to work part-time, meaning he hasn’t paid enough social insurance to get a contributory pension.He continues to work one day a week to supplement the non-contributory benefit he receives from Government of about $447 a month. That’s not enough for FutureCare so he pays for HIP, the basic state health insurance plan, and is left with about $56 a month.“That ain’t much,” says Andrew. “I can’t live this way, not in these times, anyhow.”Despite his meagre income, he’s not expecting a handout from anyone and is “quite happy to keep on working” into his old age.“I ain’t going to retire,” he says. “So long as I’m in good health, I’m going to keep working until I drop. I’m alright. I have got a lot of health and strength.“I want the good things in life. I’m trying to save now but it seems like nothing is working out for me.”Nor is it working out for his mother, who readily states: “I would say, right now, life is a struggle.”Evelyn picks up a contributory pension of $740 a month, once her FutureCare phase one payment of $375 is taken out.She and her family need to find just under $2,000 a month for the mortgage an expense usually met by having a tenant. “Right now, we don’t have a tenant so we are struggling to the knees until we get another tenant,” she says.“My pension, period, goes towards the household. Everything is so expensive in the supermarkets. A loaf of bread is almost $6. I’m trying to feed myself and pay the doctor when we go to him.”Evelyn says a private insurance company boss recently lectured her on the need to provide for one’s retirement.Her voice rises as she recalls: “I said ‘You little upstart! What do you think I have been doing?’. I have been saving all my life but it doesn’t help. Houses need repairs. My money has gone on the household and my life.”Another 65-year-old, Daniel*, also of Southampton, never made it onto the property ladder, though he has worked since he was a teenager.He hasn’t paid enough social insurance to get a contributory pension, due to several spells living overseas.Daniel, who has a long-term illness that requires regular prescriptions, now works part-time as a self-employed maintenance man and expects to stop “when I drop dead”.“This isn’t the UK,” he says. “They don’t have a safety net.”He never anticipated that the bottom would fall out of the hotel industry, where he previously worked, or that health care costs and rents would rise so much.Last year, before he was eligible for FutureCare, he had to “go begging” to the LCCA (Lady Cubitt Compassionate Association) for money for overseas medical treatment not covered under HIP.He is still paying back the $8,000 he borrowed, on top of his monthly $1,300 rent and $635 FutureCare premium.“I don’t think about it much,” he says of retirement. “You just have to do what you do to survive. You don’t expect much from this Government.“The only advantage you get over 65 is supposedly the bus [free public transport]. You see those older people packing bags in the supermarket? What do you think they do it for? Because they need money.”It isn’t only blue-collar or unskilled workers who struggle to make ends meet after 65. Veronica*, 69, is an unmarried professional who expects to have to retire from her current job at 70, though she would rather not.“I will look for another job,” she says. “I like working. Being single, I like to get out and be with people. But more importantly, it means I’m on the health insurance. Thank God I kept working after 65 because last year I had to have my bladder removed because of cancer.”Veronica needed nine weeks of chemotherapy, a month-long stay in Boston for the operation and seven weeks of radiation treatment. “If I’d have had to face that on HIP, I’d be dead and buried,” she says.She has worked since the age of 17, always for non-profit organisations, and has rented rather than bought property, for financial reasons.“It’s always a lot more difficult when you live on your own,” she says. “With nobody sharing the rent, you never get yourself established.”She is now back at work three-and-a-half days a week and says she leads an unextravagant life, yet still worries what will happen when she can no longer earn.“I really take care all of the time,” she insists. “I don’t buy new clothes; I shop at thrift shops. I don’t waste electricity. I dry my clothes on the line.“I’m coping okay but I’m not quite sure how I’m going to go on in my later years.”It’s a concern that the majority of Bermuda’s citizens, regardless of whether they own property, need to take seriously.Another woman, Pamela*, tells this newspaper how her war veteran father found himself owing the Lahey Clinic in Massachusetts more than $100,000 after he needed open heart surgery.The octogenarian “worked hard for his kids” his whole life, according to his daughter, and stayed on his employers’ health insurance plan after retirement.But he ended up on HIP when the terms of the plan changed and his monthly premium went up to $4,000 a month an impossible amount on his combined contributory and occupational pension of little more than $1,000.The overseas treatment he needed for his heart wasn’t covered by the state health care plan, hence the huge medical bill.Since he and his wife owned property, they were not eligible for Financial Assistance and had to find the funds to pay back a loan from LCCA.Pamela says: “They had to scramble, they had to scrounge. They had to sell a whole lot of things because the health insurance failed.”The man’s war veteran status has now been recognised, meaning his health insurance premiums are paid. But his 86-year-old wife, who was a housewife and gets a non-contributory benefit of $200 a month, must find $635 for FutureCare.James McCulloch, a baby boomer turning 65 in July, knows he is in a better position that many of his generation and puts it down to good financial planning.The semi-retired freelance accountant and management consultant could retire if he wanted but says: “I do feel it important to carry on working anyway, keeping your brain going, keeping physically active.”The father-of-one and grandfather has drawn up a “bucket list” of things to do before he dies and is training to become a maths tutor through the Reading Clinic.He believes seniors have a huge amount to contribute to society but, as treasurer and a director of Age Concern, he knows all about the problems facing many.“I have heard a few years ago about people deciding to leave [after the age of 65] and it astonished me. I’m now hearing more about people deciding to leave and it doesn’t astonish me. People just do the math.”He says the lucky ones are those few who get to stay on their company health scheme after retirement effectively being subsidised by younger employees.That model needs to be adopted by Government, he believes, to fund health care for all. “The only option is to spread the insurance risk over a larger pool of people. It’s going to have to happen.“If you go as a single older person to an insurance company now, the premium is astonishing: over $1,000 a month.”Mr McCulloch, who moved here from the UK in 1983 and married a Bermudian, thinks social insurance, currently $30.40 a week for employees, may need to rise to pay for the growing geriatric population.And he says the law which requires Bermudians to pay five percent of their earnings into an occupational pension, along with five percent from their employers, needs to be revisited.Those who work for a company for less than two years, before the pension is vested, can take out their contributions and, if they wish, spend them. “The consequence is that when those people reach 65, they’ll have nothing. All they will have is the government pension which, realistically, is not going to be enough to live on.”Leon Albuoy turned 65 in June and has no plans to leave his job as distribution manager for AF Smith.He says he’s thankful to work for a “progressive” boss who is happy to employ seniors and adds: “I have a lot of life left in me. I have been working since I was 14 or 15. I’m not about to just sit around and, I guess, be non-productive.“Finances is one thing but even if I had a million bucks I still could not see myself, even at age 65, sitting back.”He believes the key to a happier old age is finding a job that you love and sticking at it, not playing golf or putting your feet up.“Once you find your little niche, no matter what age you are, even if you are financially able do it, you continue as long as you can. The word retirement to me doesn’t really exist.”If he ever does have to stop working, he’s not too worried about making ends meet. He and his wife, who have six grown-up children between them, have prepared for the future.“There’s a certain element of planning that’s required,” says Mr Albuoy, who lives in Hamilton Parish. “I credit my wife with some forward thinking with regards to this, as well.“The other element is that I’m a Christian. God has taken care of everything for me. He’ll take care of me from now until the day I die.”l Useful websites:Check your social insurance contributions at www.socialinsurance.gov.bm. Read the Government’s National Health Plan at www.bhec.bm. Feedback must be submitted by April 30.* Not their real names.** Are you affected by this? E-mail sstrangeways[AT]royalgazette.bm