Scottish Widows almost made me qualify for an enhanced annuity after I read a letter from them late last night in my post-flight stupor.
I had to re-read it again this morning to see if it made sense.
It did not.
It informed me that "we've started to move some, or all of your savings into lower-risk funds."
I'm 47.
Admittedly when I first had this pension the state pension age for women was still 60, so I had put 62 as my selected retirement age on my form and had not changed it in line with the state pension age increases.
But to be told 15 years out from my original estimated selected retirement age that I am being moved into low-risk funds already shocked me significantly.
Most pension providers in the UK will carry information on how they manage workplace pension policies. I double-checked with Phoenix Life and subsidiary ReAssure - both websites state this de-risking strategy normally happens five years from retirement.
I hopped over to Aviva. They say this generally, as a rule, starts in one's 50s. Royal London has a risk profiler tool you can use to see whether you should be moving into lower risk funds 15, 10 and 5 years from retirement.
But there on Scottish Widows' website is the statement they will do this automatically 15 years from retirement.
I'm already battling to build my pot, from historic years of tiny salaries and pay gap inequity that, despite my dutiful adherence since I started working at 22 to paying the maximum permitted by scheme rules, meant my pot hardly grew.
I was hammered by three stock market shocks, especially the global financial crisis which wiped out all the gains my first defined contribution pots had made.
Over the next 15 years I could be invested in a good blend of equities to help me claw back some of these "lost years". I need a big growth tilt, not income.
Needless to say, this weekend I'm going to be spending time fixing this situation.
I can't help but think of all the less financially savvy people who will have gotten that letter and just not engaged with it because it seems like too much hard work or they don't realise what a low-risk strategy that far out from retirement will mean for their pot's growth prospects.
As a letter, it was worded pretty well - but again, I'm savvy enough to know what a low-risk strategy means for my pension over the next 15 to 20 years.
Fifteen years is far too early to be moving people automatically and I'm not ready for my "selected retirement age".
If we're being honest, few people in the UK will be ready for that - and they need all the help they can get to make sure their expected retirement outcome is their desired retirement outcome, not some dispassionate actuarial calculation made by a machine.
