The illusory "corner pensioner"

However, the "corner pensioner" is an illusion; hardly any pensioner fulfils all of the following criteria:

•     He pays 45 years of contributions into the pension insurance.
•     He earns the average salary of all insured persons every year.
•     At the start of the pension, the corner pensioner reaches the standard age limits.
•     At the start of the pension, the basic pensioner has 45 earning points.

The reality

The fact is that entering working life is also the right entry into old-age provision. It is also a fact that those starting their careers should deal with the topic of old-age provision themselves, otherwise one day the friendly gentleman from the insurance company will be standing at the door. Equipped with a head start in knowledge and as much time as it takes for the contract to be signed.

How do I determine my pension needs?

None of us can see into the future, so we have to operate with the figures we know today. These include, on the one hand, the entitlement to the statutory pension insurance and, on the other hand, today's income. Our sister portal Finanzrechner.org, for example, offers its readers a pension calculator that provides at least a rough guide.

This gives you a feeling for how big the gap will be later on. A person who wants to spend his retirement at home naturally needs less money than a pensioner who wants to travel a lot and has expensive hobbies.

When calculating the supplementary pension, you also have to take into account whether the capital in trader app will be consumed later or whether the capital stock should be preserved. In the first case, it is a gamble for time. The average life expectancy for a man is currently 81 years, for a woman 86 years.

Interest calculators on the Internet make it possible to find out with just a few entries how much you need to invest each month to obtain the desired capital stock at the desired time.

Determining your needs

Let's assume you are 35 years old and determine a pension gap of 500 euros per month to your presumed last net income. You are male and do not want to rely entirely on your statistical life expectancy, but hope to live a little longer. As a realist, you assume a pension start at 67 and a life expectancy of 90 years, so you have to make provisions for the duration of 23 years.

With a complete consumption of capital, you need 138,000 euros. Since you want to be on the safe side, you assume a capital of 150,000 euros at the age of 67.

The question now is how you can save this amount with as little financial effort as possible. There are various options:

•     Classic life or pension insurance
•     Unit-linked solution
•     Investment fund savings plan
•     Call money / time deposit
•     ETF savings plan
•     Asset management via Roboadvisor
•     Property rented out to third parties

This 30-year period underlines once again the performance of shares since 1926 shown in a previous chart. There is no way around shares in a long-term old-age provision strategy. The so-called "imperial road to old-age provision", i.e. property rented out to third parties, also harbours risks such as the costs of renovation or simply not being able to rent.