Worried about having enough savings to retire comfortably? The Brits think they have a solution: Buy wine, art or a vacation home.

A major change in British personal retirement savings accounts is designed to give tax incentives for a range of investments including wine, residential property, antiques, stamp collections and classic cars in addition to stocks, bonds and mutual funds. The law takes effect April 6, which the British government has dubbed "A-Day."

In the U.S., where most of the money in retirement accounts is invested in mutual funds, many people with self-directed Individual Retirement Accounts are putting money into real estate and small businesses. The U.S. rules, however, specifically don't allow investments in collectibles.

But in Britain, art merchants and wine shops already are starting to tout the investment quality of their wares. At the recent British Art Fair in London, a major modern-art show, a press release declared: "Art for pensions!"

Berry Bros. & Rudd, a top London wine merchant, recently mailed a letter to customers recommending fine wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy as good investments for the new retirement accounts, which are called self-invested personal pension schemes, or SIPPs, and are similar to IRAs in the U.S.

"Fine wine can be put into pension plans," says the letter. It goes on to warn prospective investors that they should consider getting in before supplies dry up: "We fully expect the quantities of the top blue-chip wines of the world -- particularly from Bordeaux and Burgundy -- to reduce substantially in the run-up to 6th April 2006."

Peter Osborne, deputy chairman of the Society of London Art Dealers and the owner of an art gallery in Mayfair, is starting to encourage investors, too. "Someone walks into my gallery and looks at a beautiful Henry Moore and says 'I love it, but I can't afford it,' and I say, 'Why don't you buy it with your pension fund?' " he says.

But there is a catch. To get the tax break, Brits can't use what they have bought unless they pay "the cash equivalent of the benefit in kind," according to the new tax law. That means wine drinkers can't uncork their purchases unless they buy them back from the fund. Art collectors, to get the tax break, must leave paintings in locked attics or loan them to museums or galleries. If they look at the art at home, they will have to pay an equivalent of 8 percent tax on the value of the piece every year it is in their houses.

The "Pension Tax Simplification" law is part of a government campaign to address a serious problem: people in Britain, like those in the U.S. and much of Europe, aren't saving adequately for retirement. In addition to expanding the investment choices in SIPPs, the government is examining the state pension system and is expected later this month to recommend an increase in the national retirement age to 67 from 65.

The British government has been trying to encourage individuals to take more responsibility for their pensions. For more than a decade, United Kingdom employers, like those in the U.S., have been switching from a defined-benefit system, in which retirees receive a guaranteed percentage of their salary, to a defined-contribution system in which employees put money aside from their paychecks, often with a company contribution.

SIPPs were started in 1989 but until now have been limited to investments in commercial property, stocks and bonds. Currently, only about 100,000 people have SIPPs, compared with 12 million people who draw government pensions, according to the British Department of Work and Pensions. SIPPs can be set up only by government-approved financial advisers and administrators.

While some administrators applaud the plan to expand investment choices, others are worried about it. Nigel Bunting, head of intermediary relationships at Suffolk Life, an insurance company in Ipswich, says investments such as wine and art are going to be "unsuitable for the majority of individuals" and are unlikely to be permitted by his company.

Francis Taylor, a spokesman for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, which is similar to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, defends the program, saying that allowing collectibles in pension plans with tax incentives "will encourage investors to save for retirement and take responsibility for their own retirement."

To invest in collectibles, individual must set up SIPPs accounts by depositing after-tax money in funds in the care of government-approved overseers. The government will return taxes already paid, which run as high as 40 percent of income in the U.K. So, if people put in GBP 60,000 ($103,000) in after-tax money, they can spend as much as GBP 100,000 on collectibles to be held in the pension because they will get a refund on taxes they have already paid.

Every year they will be allowed to deposit up to their annual incomes, with a limit of GBP 215,000 a year. SIPPs have a lifetime cap of GBP 1.5 million, beyond which the very wealthy won't get tax relief. The amount will be increased over time.

But "regulation is very difficult under the new rules," says Ronnie Ludwig, a partner at Saffery Champness, an accountancy firm in Edinburgh. "We are still waiting to hear more about policing."

Some accountants worry that the new tax break will trigger unwise investing. "People shouldn't put all their pension money into residential property or artwork," says David Fairs, a pensions partner at KPMG in London. "It needs to be used within a well-balanced pension plan that includes stocks, bonds and other investments."

The most popular investment could be homes that people buy and then rent out. The Brits have gone property-wild in recent years, buying up second homes in England and Spain, popular for its sunny climate, as well as in the new European Union countries. Under the new tax law, people can buy second homes and rent them out. They must charge themselves rent if they stay in these homes before or after retiring.

But already there is interest in more esoteric investments. Simon Staples, Berry Bros. & Rudd fine-wine sales director, says cases of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982 have risen to GBP 8,000 a case from GBP 4,000 in June from speculation of an increase in fine-wine buying for the new plans.

"The SIPPs wine isn't for drinking," says Sam Fazeli, a 41-year-old banker in London, who has already bought several cases of Chateau Latour 2003 for GBP 2,200 a case that he says he "would happily move into a pension fund." "If you are really interested in drinking," he says, "then you need to buy an extra case or two to keep to the side."