Why house prices are the new pensions

People warn me that I won't live as long but I'm not sure that worries me because a long retirement doesn't look such a good prospect at the moment.

I'm pretty sure that Jeanne Calment, the woman credited with living longest in the world, both drank and smoked. She lived to 122, and famously said "I only have one wrinkle and I'm sitting on it".

All I can hope is that she was comfortable.

I have years ahead before I need to worry about the price of incontinence pants but I am still worrying about old age; talk of pensions and living in penury seems to be everywhere and it doesn't look good.

I mean, imagine living to a ripe old age. Your lungs are in great shape and you haven't drunk so much that you can't still follow Countdown. Marvellous – until you discover that you've no money to live on because the pension providers decided not to do what you, quite reasonably, expected of them, and provide a pension.

I was talking to Brendan Barber, the general-secretary-elect of the TUC about it only this lunchtime. Barber said the fact is that pension providers are not doing what it says on the tin – providing for that great day when you clock off from work for the last time and clock on to full-time basket-weaving or bowls-playing or whatever – and it is a major problem for us all.

I am only an ordinary reader of newspapers but even I can see a mixed message when I get one. On 28 January the Financial Services Authority warned what they called "concerned 50-somethings" not to be "lured into cashing in their pension pots early".

Pension providers are not doing what it says on the tin – providing for that great day when you clock off from work for the last time – and it is a major problem

A week later Standard Life, Europe's largest mutual insurer, cut pension payouts by 15% – giving you sweet FA, which is the same initials as the FSA but in a less successful order. If you had cashed in earlier you would have been quids-in, and worryingly Standard Life is one of the companies doing better than most.

The government, ever helpful, has come up with a strategy. In December last year it issued a green paper (which comes before a white paper which comes before a bill which comes before anything comes before parliament and which may not come before Brooklyn Beckham retires).

The green paper, unlike the green giant, was less than jolly. Its grim reaper message to millions of middle-income workers said: you have three options. You can:

• "save now!" – basically, don't enjoy yourself while you are working in order to be able to eat when you are not
  
• work forever, and end up one of those charming but elderly people stacking shelves in DIY stores
  
• retire in penury and spend your twilight years thinking that bread crusts in milk are a bit of a treat.

There is a fourth option of course, which the green paper ignored, and that is to be Lord Irvine. You are guaranteed £2m to ease your way out onto the golf course of later years. Sadly, this career path is open only to a few.

I'm no accountant, but I think I've got the answer. I've decided not to bother with regular financial contributions to anyone except myself. I have decided to live in my pension. No, I haven't moved into my local branch of Abbey National; I am staying at home and trying to pay the place off as quick as I can.

Despite everything anyone ever says about house prices, they seem to continue in an upward fashion. Housing might be expensive, but borrowing is still cheap, if you can just get your foot on the ladder. The last Nationwide housing survey said that last year house prices went up 25%. Hometrack reckons that 2003 may only see a rise of 8% but that still sounds pretty good to me.

Call me naive, but all the people I've ever come across with real money made it in property. I met a London cab driver the other day who told me he had bought a plethora of places and was planning to enter la dolce vita by the time he hits 40 (I didn't leave a tip).