A growing number of Gen Z workers have quietly accepted what older generations still deny: the state pension will not exist when they retire, or if it does, it will arrive as a ceremonial £12 per month in Tesco vouchers. Rather than spiral into the kind of quiet panic that built the previous generation’s property obsession, Gen Z has simply pivoted to alternative retirement strategies that would make any financial advisor weep into their spreadsheet.
The plan is elegant in its desperation. Why wait for a government cheque that may never arrive when you could invest in avocado futures? One 26-year-old from Bristol is already securing land in Morocco, betting that climate change will make avocados the new oil. Another has calculated that if her TikTok account reaches 2 million followers by age 35, the algorithmic ad revenue alone will fund her retirement—assuming TikTok still exists, the algorithm still favors her niche (“thrifting fails”), and she does not get cancelled for something she said in 2024.
The absurdity is not lost on them. They are not confused or delusional. They are simply doing the maths. A state pension system designed for a world where people retired at 65 and died at 72 does not scale when you might spend 40 years in retirement. So they are building backup plans that range from the sensible—actually saving in ISAs—to the genuinely bizarre, like one London-based investor who is buying vintage Nintendo cartridges on the theory that nostalgia is recession-proof.
The real story here is not that Gen Z are bad at planning. It is that they have accepted a fundamental truth: the social contract is broken, so you might as well make your own contract with whatever assets you can actually control. Avocados included.