I grow giant vegetables – but I regret not tending to my pension earlier

In our Pension Diaries series, we speak to people of all ages in the UK to find out how much or how little they have saved for retirement and the realities of putting money aside for your future. This week, we speak to Kevin Fortey, 48, who lives in Cwmbran, Wales, with his partner and has a son at university. Kevin works in housing in local government, but is passionate about growing giant fruit and vegetables and holds 15 Guinness World Records including for the world’s heaviest beetroot, the longest sweet pepper and the tallest cucumber plant. Kevin reveals that he has only recently started paying attention to his pension situation and has realised that like vegetables, pensions need time and that starting small can reap big rewards. Shorts What is your career and how did you get into growing giant vegetables? I’ve been growing vegetables since I was four years old as I used to love going to my dad’s allotment and helping him. My dad started off the UK Giant Vegetable Championships which people now grow for from all over the world. My dad never managed to achieve a Guinness World Record for giant vegetables, but I persevered and I never imagined my dedication would lead to me achieving 15 Guinness World Records for growing giant vegetables, fruits and plants. Giant vegetables is very much a hobby for me, but it has given me some fantastic opportunities to travel all over the world. Kevin Fortey with his brother and their first pumpkin-growing contest when they were younger While I was a student, I worked at Sainsbury’s pushing trolleys and earning £2.24 an hour. I then migrated to the produce department handling vegetables. In terms of career, I went to university and studied housing and my whole career path has since been in local government housing. When did you first start thinking about pensions? I really wish I had started off a pension at the age of 18 when I was working at Sainsbury’s – but I didn’t. In those days there was no automatic enrolment, so I just didn’t bother having a pension. When you are younger, retirement feels like such a long way away that it is very easy to put off thinking about pensions. It was only after I went to university and got my professional qualifications in housing and started my career in the housing path that I started a pension. But even then, pensions were something that I didn’t really think about and were just there in the background. It is only in recent weeks that I have started paying attention to my future and thinking about retirement. How many pension pots do you have and what is their estimated value? I have got three pension pots from different stages of my working life. One of them is my defined benefit pension with my local government job. The other is an additional voluntary contribution (AVC) pension which gives my local government pension a boost. I also have a health pension. Defined benefit pensions don’t have a straightforward pot value in the same way as a personal pension as they are a final salary pension. I have only started looking at my pensions recently, so am not really sure of their worth. I think they will probably be worth around £38,000 a year to me in retirement. What is your attitude to money and pensions? I have always been fairly sensible with money, but the strange thing is that even though I check my bank account and my credit card statements regularly, I didn’t do that with my pensions. Kevin says big results start small – something he has learnt from his experience in taking care of vegetables I am far from alone from what I can see. Research in the Pension Attention campaign shows that 33 per cent of UK adults don’t know what is in their pension pot and 37 per cent don’t understand how their pension grows over time. I can completely understand how this happens as that was me until recently. You wouldn’t go years without looking at your bank balance. However, it is surprisingly easy for people to do it with their pension as retirement might be 30 or 40 years away. How do you feel pensions are similar to giant vegetables? I have learnt that big results start small and one tiny seed, given enough time and a bit of care, can grow into something incredible. With growing, I always find the earlier you plant the seed, the greater and more productive the harvest. The irony for me is that I have spent years carefully feeding my plants, checking them, measuring them and trying to grow them as big as possible – but I have left my pensions growing in the background. Kevin with a giant marrow. ‘I never imagined my dedication would lead to me achieving 15 Guinness World Records for growing giant vegetables, fruits and plants,’ he said (Photo: Grow Your Pension) Pensions are very much the same. The earlier you start, the more attention you give them and the more time you give them to grow, the better position you will be in for retirement. You can’t just plant something and forget about it – and it’s the same with your pension. What is your biggest pension regret? My dad passed away when he was 53, so it has made me think about my own future. My biggest regret is not investing in my pension earlier. But when you are younger, you have different aspirations and dreams and you are buying properties and taking on mortgages and you don’t have as much disposable income to think about future planning. Retirement can feel like a distant dream and it is quite hard to think about future predictions when you are starting to grow your pension. If I could speak to my younger self, I would tell myself to start thinking about pensions very early on, even if retirement feels like decades away. What is your dream for retirement? My ambition is to retire at 55, which is only seven years away. I certainly wouldn’t stop growing giant vegetables and I would love the freedom to spend more time growing and travelling to meet growers all over the world. Kevin wants to carry on growing giant vegetables in retirement For me, retirement is about enjoying life without having to structure everything around work and not having to wake up and drive into work or switch on the laptop. The difference is that I would be doing things because I wanted to, rather than to earn a living. For me, that is what encapsulates retirement – having control over your own time and life and future aspirations. Would you like to be featured in Pension Diaries? E-mail: Aasma.day@theipaper.com