It’s the eve of the General Election and it seems to me that there are two groups of voters that all the parties have to attract and woo – the young and the old. I like to tell myself that I’m the squeezed middle, but have to admit that I’m heading toward the latter camp much faster than I’m comfortable with, and thus I know where my sympathies selfishly lie.

That’s not to say I don’t relate to the predicament young people today find themselves in, I just don’t understand why more of them don’t seem to recognise it? Or, if they do, don’t seem to be overtly bothered with the debt ridden future that faces the majority of them.

While the young probably figure that the future will work itself out and live a bit more for the moment, the nearer I approach pensionable age (which I’m taking as 55) the more I find myself pondering the future and trying to work out the detail. What steps do I have to take to fully realise the next two, or hopefully three, decades of life that might be left for me to really enjoy?

For those of you who’ve managed to plough your way through self-improvement tomes, there’s a trick or technique they often encourage you to employ to help you work out your values and what’s important to you in life. What you have to do is vividly imagine your own funeral service and focus on what your close family, friends and possibly colleagues might want to say about you in a eulogy. What would you want them to say?

I’ve played with this technique over the years, but I’m a bit like Woody Allen when it comes to my own death – I’ve no intention of being there when it actually happens. And, on the occasional time when I have actually had a serious attempt at imagining this situation, I can’t say I found any blinding insights. I didn’t imagine anyone getting up and saying, “He had a fantastic house that we all envied, with that red Ferrari parked in front of it. And wow, I see he’s still wearing that Rolex Oyster there, lying in the casket.” (Actually I can’t imagine anyone picturing that at their own funeral, except maybe Piers Morgan.) What most of us probably think about are people extolling our social connections, the deep friendships we had, the importance we placed on being close to our loved ones.

Another thing I don’t imagine many people thinking about is their funeral taking place on some distant shore. I have a few friends who are currently enjoying the expat life in Hong Kong, Dubai, Spain, the Philippines and so on. I’m sure none of them have any intention of dying in these countries though, because all of them, when I’ve asked, are imagining retirement to a serene Scottish shore, or a rose covered English cottage with the village pub a stone’s throw away. Where, of course, everybody knows your name. Which begs the question of why they left in the first place, but we all know the answer to that, don’t we? Unless they’re running away from something, it’s usually money, or an improved life they think money can buy, that they’re running toward. Fair enough, I say, I’ve been tempted to do the same myself over the years – but I’ve never imagined anything but my own retirement here in Britain.

It strikes me that the young know and appreciate the value of friendships and community every bit as much as the old. I don’t think you ever forge as strong bonds with anyone as you did when you were young. If you’re lucky, and work at it, you’ll keep those friendships with you for a lifetime and you’ll always feel your heart warm a little bit when you walk the streets of your old home town.

So, given that the young and old seem to have a surer sense of what’s important to them, it’s a bit sad that the election focuses so much on the monetary side of life – tuition fees, tax bombs, the cost of social care, whether or not you’ll receive a free bus pass. Yes, those things are important, but when they exclude everything else then we all end up poorer because of it.