Lifecycle Planning and Responsibility: Prospection and Retrospection in Germany

Financialisation confronts households in the form of planning and risk management along standardised lifecycle stages like starting a family or preparing for retirement. The finance sector in Germany represents this as the exercise of responsibility. Yet German government institutions have long encouraged and rewarded a different kind of responsibly, manifested in prudent study, work and consumption habits. In this paper, I tease out from life histories of German retirees their nonchalance about planning, antipathy toward finance and strong sense of personal effort and investment. Contrasting them with the contingency and treacherousness of financial planning, I argue that financialisation is preceded by ideological work, which redefines responsibility according to its own needs and in so doing, obscures its stakes.