The Financiële Dagblad published an unfortunate league table earlier this week, naming and shaming the 100 worst-performing Dutch pension funds, as published by the Central Bank. Pity your poor hairdresser: the Hairdressers Pension Fund came in dead last, underperforming the regulator’s benchmark by a hefty 24%, meaning that the fund, without repair, is only capable of covering some four-fifths of its pension obligations over time.
What does this imply for your average 30-year-old girl with a tattoo, who washes your hair, listens to your issues with the kids, chats happily about the last vacation, and moans about their love life? It is bad news, the more so as many of today’s young hairdressers probably don’t participate in the professional group pension scheme and, if they do, probably don’t realise in what dire straits the fund has landed. Like most young people, ideas about retirement are infinitely distant: old folks’ problems.
OK, most hairdressers (why?) seem to be young. They have time to deal with their futures. But still something bothers me about this. The hairdressers seem to me a particularly vulnerable vocational group. They don’t strike me as particularly financially literate, and neither it seems are their professional pension providers. Is this a case for state intervention? Maybe so, I’m not sure. But in the meantime, do an extra colour shot, have a touch-up, a blow-dry, whatever. Bring your spaniel in for a trim. The idea of an old-age hairdresser with neither her clients’ laments nor a basic pension as comfort does not strike me as fair.
-Jan Cherim
Amsterdam, February 2012
