Marcel Berkhout studied at De Haagse Hogeschool (Computer Science), did his graduation project at IBM Uithoorn and then joined IBM in 1998. He had several roles at IBM, worked in Dublin for some time and is now Technical Sales Specialist. The department where he works is called Data & AI, part of the IBM Technology Unit.
‘I mainly deal with everything around the topic of data management. In addition, I focus on data privacy. These days, fortunately, companies and governments are increasingly seeing the importance of privacy. Partly thanks to the introduction of the AVG in 2018.’
I’m an optimistic person by nature
‘I work at IBM, so I build up a pension with SPIN. I’m honestly not too concerned with that otherwise. I read everywhere that the IBM pension is still doing well. As long as things are going well, I don’t see a need to delve very much into my pension. Whether that’s smart, we won’t know until later.
‘ I always think, ‘it will work out.’ Fortunately, my wife thinks the same way. She’s not so concerned with retirement either.’
Letter from the pension fund did stir something up
“Perhaps nice to mention: my wife also works at IBM. So we both accrue pension with SPIN. Some time ago we both received a letter from the pension fund. It was about the state of our pensions and what we could do ourselves for a higher pension.’
‘I notice that lately we have been talking about our pensions from time to time. Surely that’s also because of that kind of mail from SPIN. But yes, what are you going to do then? We both also participate in SPIN’s DC plan. So we first looked at our investments, and how the different profiles have done in recent years. Based on that, we both started investing more offensively. We are in our forties, an age at which you can still take some risk.
Our goal is to retire mortgage-free
“It’s a first step, but I expect it will stop here for now. We are already looking at how we can keep our expenses as low as possible. The goal is to have our house fully paid off before we retire. That is why we are now putting as much money as possible into our house.
“At some point we’ll get more into retirement, you know. That’s almost inevitable as you get older. Maybe in a year or two, when I turn 50. That might be a good time to see if we need to do anything extra for retirement.’
We’re not in bad shape at all
‘So for the time being, I’m not worried. So last year we got that letter from SPIN in the mail. On it was an indication of our accrued pension, and whether it would be enough. My wife and I were both on “just enough. A tight enough mark. But certainly no reason to panic. After all, that letter was addressed to individual members. That makes sense, but of course we both build up pensions with SPIN. Moreover, the letter did not take into account other assets you may have as a participant, such as your own home. So you have to watch yourself carefully how you interpret this kind of information. Our conclusion: we’re not in bad shape at all. If I were the sole breadwinner, our situation would obviously be very different.’
Webinars I found very informative
‘I do think it’s really good that SPIN is doing all this. Because for some colleagues the pension situation may be very different from ours. For example, because they have been divorced or have not built up any pension at all for a while. I would especially like to compliment SPIN for the webinars. They were very informative and I followed them with great interest. So I’m actually quite well informed. Maybe I am more concerned with retirement than I think!