Advice for someone with no pension.

Well in my opinion the last thing you should do is sell up and rent.

I'm just going to work until I die. Well I will if I can find another job anyway.

Yep my pension pot is going to be pretty pissy.

My sister doesn’t have a pension. She says her house is her pension, she has spent her life moving from one house to another working up the ladder, never really having a ‘home’, just a house. She will sell up and downsize when the time comes, releasing a pot of cash to retire with. I have no idea how this is working out for her what with interest rates/house prices etc. she might be sitting on a small fortune or she might be mortgaged to the hilt.

Do NOT sell your house.
It's never too late to start a pension.
Simplest option is Vanguard.
You cannot afford to not have a pension.

Down size and using that equity is a reasonable approach, renting generally is bad, it will cost you way more in the long run. A reverse mortgage might give you a small sum (assuming you have no dependents this might be an idea).

If you think the state pension is enough (I dont, it really isnt much), then you probably need 10k X number of years you want to retire early saved up. If you save this into a pension today, you will get tax breaks on it. Your fund will grow a little but tbh with the timescales involved it will be small enough to not really bother calculating. You probably also want to pay off all your current mortgage

I've got next to **** all. At the rate at which the government keeps adjusting the retirement age my pension plan is playing right into their hands because it's broadly "dying."

From the perspective of a reasonably medically fit person, you definitely need a private pension on top. I look at how my retired family have survived through the last difficult years. Both those on state pension only, and those with additional private/forces pensions. There are clear differences in quality of life.

As above, never too late to start a pension. With tax advantages any spare savings it should be the default option.

Get a decent IFA, as above never too late. The power of compound interest can help more than you think.

You should start with a spreadsheet of what your current outgoings are against what current state pension covers. For the sake of ball park figures ignore inflation and just look at costs now. Then consider how much equity do you have in the house, will you be willing to downsize and possibly move to cheaper areas to get cash from that, but offset by social issues if you move away from friends and family and the support and social interaction they bring. Selling a house to rent would be financial suicide, properly nuts in most/all areas of the country, since rents are higher than mortgage. As others have said, putting something into a pension now has a tax break and cumulative interest, so best start saving what you can now and pay off as much of the mortgage as you can.

I have the crap Nest pension. About £15k in it with another £3k in savings. Wife, two kids and small dog with me as the sole earner. I’m 46 and planning on either working until I drop dead, befriending a lonely old person with no family or going to the casino on my 65th birthday!

Also loving the idea of spare savings. Only on STW! There’s a lot of folk don’t have savings, never mind spare.

You cannot afford to not have a pension.

Well, yes and no.
If you can get by with a retirement budget (great proposal @konagirl ) that is the possible state pension + some money released through downsizing then a private pension would be ‘extra’.

As there are two of you OP downsizing seems a bit moot?

On the other hand, YES! With 15 years until the OP reaches state pension age there’s time to get some of that FREE MONEY that flows into private pensions.

Yes FREE MONEY! Money saving expert Martin Lewis has a piece on pensions. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/discount-pensions/

Just like a savings plan with the excitement of compound interest but with added oomph from saving ~gross pay. Naturally, with any equity-based investment it will fluctuate in value, but index funds typically offer a return over the long term.

@konagirl has made a great suggestion. A proper rundown of what you spend now and a look forward to how that may change in retirement/part-time working will help you make your own plan and make the most of other folks’ private-pensionless retirement ideas.

52 seems early to be considering reduced working time, good on you for prioritising fun over work.

This calculator may help with estimating how long that retirement budget will go on for. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07

I'm mostly counting on a lottery win at some point (although now I've finally paid off my mortgage I've started putting 25% of my salary into a pension and probably have about 10 years of work left in me, unless AI keeps advancing quickly and people realise that's cheaper than employing me...)

First off Id drop any notion of reducing your hours before you retire, that really doesnt sound feasible in your situation. No pension at your age, its all about damage limitation in the future rather than quality of life.

And if the house is worth so much it might fund you to retirement then unless you hit the jackpot in terms of its value going up you made a bad choice ditching your pension to afford it.

State pension is subsistence level, the best thing you can do to maximise it is not being paying rent out of it.

For what its worth I doubt you are unusal, i think our generation is a pensions timebomb, there are many people out the in a worse situatiom than you, your saving grace is yoir house, do not throw that away. Its worth more as somewhere to live than a pot of cash.

Personally Ive paid into pensions with employer contributions for 27 of my 31 years of working, house will be paid off in 18 months and I hope to save something between now and when I retire. Theres been some tough times but never did I consider ditching the pension.  I dont expect a spectacular retirement like the baby boomers have had with final salary pension schemes and early retirement bonuses. I might be lucky and inherit something but I'm not banking on it.

You say you stopped paying into a pension, so there is one somewhere - find out how much/little it is worth, and get an estimate for your state pension online, it's relatively straightforward.

Otherwise, review your income/spending and see how much you can put away each month. It's never too late to start. Maybe plan on fulltime till 60-62, which gives you 10 years.

Depends on the job too. A mate can't imagine not working as he loves what he does, so has no plans to retire early. Another mate has officially retired but does 2-3 shifts a week as a Tesco delivery driver to keep busy and earn a bit extra.

All those on here talking of retiring early and living the life of riley at 55 or 60 are probably a minority, perspective helps. When i started work my parents generation were retiring in their 50s on generous schemes, but thats a thing of the past for most people.

The thing is, most people seem to say that you need about a million quid in your pension pot to comfortably retire. I'd have to put so much into one now seeing as it'll only be in there for about ten years max (hopefully) and that's really not an option with costs of everything going through the roof. My first thought is to try and pay off the (relatively) small mortgage we have but this will take a few years. Would that make more sense than putting that money into a pension, and does the whole pension tax break stuff still work for the self employed?

My father had a very small pension pot from a few years working at a local authority. The rest of his life was all sorts of odd work, including significant stints as missionary in India which paid he-haw.

He's down sized from the family home after my mum died. He's in a two bed retirement flat with housing association and the modest monthly maintenance charge comes out of his house equity. He lives a relatively frugal life and it works - the few savings he had have been spent the last decade travelling to see family in Aus, NZ and India.

He is however now having to be very careful - that said he has got good friends and isn't completely skint.

So you can live off very little.

My pension calculator thing keeps telling me I need to save more if I want a foreign holiday and a new car every three years - I'm not sure any of the financial services people who make money by using your money will ever say 'you've saved enough, don't give us any more'....

Rent your house out to tennant s, then rent the cheapest place you can find . That might be a static caravan on a trailer park, but with the current status of the rental market you should be able to generate income that way.

But you basically cannot retir early.unless you stand to inherit say £200k, you will be working till probably 68, and then doing a little part time 3day week retail job at a supermarket.

To mitigate this buy a vanguard product or 4 , spread the risk worldwide, drip feed as much as you can in monthly. Don't scree around, £60pcm isn't going to make a jot of difference, has to be well into the hundreds .

To find an old pension have a look here.

https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/pensions-and-retirement/pension-problems/tracing-and-finding-lost-pensions

As pointed out, it costs you 80p to put a £1 into your pension due to tax relief. But that relies on you having 80p to lock away. Good to face this now rather than at 68.

most people seem to say that you need about a million quid in your pension pot to comfortably retire.

people who sell pensions and investments mainly.

This has a different take on it - still scary numbers for someone who doesn't have a pension pot built up but the trouble with numbers like a million, is it makes people think they have no chance and so might as well do nothing, enjoy the money while you can, and then go out in a blaze of C&H when it runs out. Which does have some attraction, and looking at my mum struggling in her later years with ill health IDK if I actually want to live to 83 or whatever my prediction is.

https://blog.moneyfarm.com/en/pensions/what-is-a-good-pension-amount-how-much-is-a-good-pension-pot/#:~:text=Yes%2C%20you%20can%20retire%20at%2060%20with%20500K%20in%20the%20UK.

I have the crap Nest pension. About £15k in it with another £3k in savings

Can you not consolidate that into a cheaper Vanguard SIPP?

My first thought is to try and pay off the (relatively) small mortgage we have but this will take a few years. Would that make more sense than putting that money into a pension, and does the whole pension tax break stuff still work for the self employed?

In my opinion yes, this is what I’m doing.  My mortgage finishes next December at my age 52.5.  The former mortgage payment is being split into SIPP and an ISA on a 75%/25% basis for the remainder of my working life.    The equity in our house (the earliest our kids will have left home will be another 8 years) will be used for our final home purchase somewhere nice and quiet + savings.

As alluded to above I watch my parents and grandparents sit around in armchairs doing very little for 20yrs becuase of a reliance on a state pension.  I’d like us to have some funds to enjoy the fruits of our labour whilst we can post retirement, but YMMV of course.

Look on the bright side, you might die at 65 and then won't have spent your life putting money into something you will never use.

Yes do try and trace any pension you might have paid into in the past. Completely agree that the proportion of people in our age group who'll have a nice retirement is very small, and agree we have a pensioner timebomb on our hands - I'm 43 and know a lot of people with no savings and still renting and that scares me. I disagree with singletrackmind that you need to save a lot, the point is that its tax efficient. Yes as self employed you state how much you've paid in pension in your tax return and usually the pension (sipp) platform will just add the 20% back (assuming basic rate tax payer). All you are doing is locking away some money but getting the tax uplift. I use Hargreaves Lansdowne regular saver. £25 per month into a tracker, over 15 years, is about £6 k (todays equivalent) which is better than a kick in the teeth. Having said all of that, with interest rates as they are it may be best to overpay the mortgage so you are paying less to the bank). Also agree it's good you are thinking about it and do consider sitting down to do a household budget.

OP says

There always seems to be threads on here about how much pension people have and what age they’re going to retire on it. To address the balance I’m wondering who else doesn’t actually have a private pension

a few replies in someone says

Personally Ive paid into pensions with employer contributions for 27 of my 31 years of working, house will be paid off in 18 months and I hope to save something between now and when I retire.

great work

You dont say where in the country you are?  My intention is to downsize and move to a cheaper & nicer part of the country (possibly world...) once retirement comes.  Hopefully near the kids if I can

Dropping days in your early 50s is impressive, the only people I know doing that are already sorted financially.  Still its your decision, live for the now.   I'd be thinking about working that extra day and putting the extra income into a pension.  Presume you are self employed if you have no pension, so the advice above about funds is sensible.  Vanguard always get recommended (I don't have one)

As a rule of thumb I was told you should be looking to save your age as a % of your salary.  No way I can do that!  But I have paid into employer schemes for 25 ish years.  Sadly it doesn't seem to be worth that much 🙁

I look at my inlaws, both had pretty low paid and modest jobs for their whole lives retired at 60, own their own home, caravan, couple of sunny holidays, cruise every year and new car every 3 years....absolutely zero chance of that for my wife and I and we would be considered high earners

True, but this is a discussion forum and will always creep. I didn't read it as 'considerably richer than yow!' and it's useful for a more general reference guide, and there's lots of useful advice for the specifics of the OP too.

Always start with you want. How much money do want to have when you stop work? Do you actually want to stop work? I've recommended MeaningfulMoney on youtube before. Yes he is an IFA but talks a lot of sense (in my opinion)

here is one to get you started..

You can disagree all you like , but once your into your 50s playing catch-up is almost impossible. Fwiw I started pension number 1 in 1987 at £50pcm, then pension number 2 in 1991 at £48 , and I am still looking at working till I'm 60.

Keep the MTG , defer as much as you can into a ppp, you get the tax back . The advantages now are no need to buy an annuity, you can draw down annual amounts to keep the tax liability low.

I'm 54. With 5 pension pots and I'm cramming £500pcm in , with a super generous employr additional top up.

I'm looking for £300 a week, a mix of rental income, draw down , then government pension. Because I've never earnt alot I am used to living on a low income and it's just me.

No you don't need a million pounds, that's some fantasy amount but you do need hundreds of thousands.unfourtunatly that s the crux of it. New roof , new car , new teeth , new boiler , a holiday abroad once a year , more heating as your at home more and you feel colder as you age. Soon ads up.

I definitely won’t be slowing down for about five years, but should I then look at selling the house, spending the collateral and renting?

Don't sell your house!!! Assuming mortgage is/will be paid off it's the biggest security you can get. And if needs be you could take equity release at a later date.

Re pensions - I'm in a similar boat. I do have small ones (at most there will be £50k in them) so I plan on working part time to keep the grey matter going.

I don't live an exciting life anyway so dreams of cruises and constant holidays don't feature in my plans.

And if my parents are anything to go by (no private pensions) - if you get on one pension benefit the government just chuck money at you. Their monthly income is higher than my monthly take home wage!

I have the crap Nest pension. About £15k in it with another £3k in savings. Wife, two kids and small dog with me as the sole earner. I’m 46 and planning on either working until I drop dead, befriending a lonely old person with no family or going to the casino on my 65th birthday!

Also loving the idea of spare savings. Only on STW! There’s a lot of folk don’t have savings, never mind spare.

Whilst they aren't the best they're far from crap. For the average punter who has no knowledge or interest in pensions they're ideal, very small selection of 'funds' (there is a high risk fund but even this is fairly low risk in comparison to what's available elsewhere) and very little to mess with/**** up. If you've logged in to your online account you can see the split between your own donations, your employers and also the tax relief/raise in fund value, the amount you'll have contributed will be around 40% of your pot value. All being well that pot value is going to be knocking on the door of £100k by the time you reach state retirement age.

Die, that's my plan

With no kids (or don't want to leave anything) you'll be using your house as 'collateral', basically selling it while living in it - I suspect you'll struggle to achieve 50% of it's 'value'.

Selling up and renting seems a poor idea, based on current rental prices - unless you're intending to spunk the lot PDQ and then live on the State.

Or is 'living on State benefits' the ACTUAL plan?

Some very sound advice so thank you.

I guess what I’m trying to avoid is working like a dog my whole life then kicking the bucket with a shed load of money tied up in a house and no kids to benefit from it. I’d like to check out of this life having enjoyed some of my hard earned money, but obviously deciding when to start downsizing is a bit hard when I don’t have access to a crystal ball. I am also aware that health will play a major part in my later life which is why I bike, surf and generally have quite a physical life to try and keep myself fit.

It also depends on what the house is - a nice 4/5 bed house in a leafy suburb worth half a million or back street terraced worth £100k?

If the former it's easy to downsize and release a load of cash - if the latter you are somewhat stuck.

"All being well that pot value is going to be knocking on the door of £100k by the time you reach state retirement age."

And worth about £2-3k pa as a pension.

If you're still paying a mortgage i'd try and prioritise paying that off first.

As others have said - its not too late to start a pension - if you can stick £100-£150 a month in it for 10 years it won't be life changing but it'll help.

The idea of releasing equity in the house is potentially good, but obviously depends on what the house is worth - you'll have more options if the house is worth £700k than if its worth £200k.

I was a late starter to the pension game - didn't start paying into it until i was 34 (I'm 50 now) but its a company scheme where they match my 7% contributions so i'm hoping it'll be adequate. My mortgage currently runs until i'm 66 so realistically i'm working until then at least.

I guess what I’m trying to avoid is working like a dog my whole life then kicking the bucket with a shed load of money tied up in a house and no kids to benefit from it.

You could always look at equity release options

Be careful not to be sucked into thinking the numbers you read here are the norm. I have a teacher's pension (you know the gold plated, unbelievably good one, well partly) It costs a fair whack every month and compared to numbers I see here will barely buy the monthly beans (exaggeration I'll be ok)
But imho you do need a plan that isn't selling the house until you can retire and downsize but that might be to the smaller house next door. (I wanted to move back to where I went to school but that's too pricey even downsized).
If you can pay off mortgage and then dump that money and more into savings.

This thread has prompted me to take a look at my old employer pension I hadn't looked at for ages - paid into for 8 years, worth £52k, projected pa pension at 65 (20 years from now) is........drum roll..... £1250, so £100 a month.

I don't think I'll be jetting off on many cruises 🙁

“All being well that pot value is going to be knocking on the door of £100k by the time you reach state retirement age.”

And worth about £2-3k pa as a pension.

An extra £2-3k pa could be the difference between a nice holiday or not.

Personally I'd rather have the £100k than not, especially as it would have cost me less than £40k to achieve it. Add that to a couple of state pensions and whatever other savings you can put together over the next 20 years. As Tesco say, every little helps.

My retirement plans are;

1. The absolute caning my body and brain took in my late teens early 20's kills me off early.

2. I'm going to attempt a bank job robbery and either get caught and fed 3times a day with no heating bills to pay, or if I get lucky blow it all on C&H and die of heart attack under Cindy Bigtits.

My plans are;

1. The absolute caning my body and brain took in my late teens early 20’s kills me off early.

2. I’m going to attempt a bank job robbery and either get caught and fed 3times a day with no heating bills to pay, or if I get lucky blow it all on C&H and die of heart attack under Cindy Bigtits.

Either way, it looks like your going to be getting a lot of sex in later life 😀

Paying in to a pension does lock the money away but alternative savings have to go a very long way to beat the tax and ni savings + the 20%.

'Which' has a useful guide on how much of a pot you'll want for 3 levels of retirement income. If you're not planning an extravagant lifestyle it's surprisingly affordable imv but you'll be wanting to smash a lot away now op. I started late as well fwiw.

"As a rule of thumb I was told you should be looking to save your age as a % of your salary. "

HALF your age.

"An extra £2-3k pa could be the difference between a nice holiday or not."

If this is your only pension other than the State Pension, it'll probably block you from receiving far, far more in State Benefits and the like.

The thing is, most people seem to say that you need about a million quid in your pension pot to comfortably retire.

I don't know that "most" people say that, but certainly its a number bandied around by people who have got used to a very comfortable standard of living who want to retire with a similarly comfortable standard of living especially if you want to do it "early".  But clearly the number must be different depending on your aspirations, how much if anything you hope to leave as a legacy for your successors, the age you want to retire, and perhaps even how long you expect to live.  If you and a spouse want to live in your 4 bedroom family home, with your country cottage retreat (or even static caravan), have 2 foreign holidays a year, each have your own car and splash cash on new bikes and woodburners like an IT consutant on STW then you need a very different size pot from if you are living in a small 2 bed terrace with one modest car and your holidays invove a touring bike and a tent.   Be careful about being sucked into other people's aspirations!

Look on the bright side, you might die at 65 and then won’t have spent your life putting money into something you will never use.

At worst, you're leaving something to help your next of kin financially.

I don’t know that “most” people say that, but certainly its a number bandied around by people who have got used to a very comfortable standard of living

It might just be 'most' people on STW, who are not really financially representative of the wider world!

Also the people who are happy talking pensions can tend to be those who are well on top of things. If your approach to personal finance is to quickly stuff all those letters unopened into a drawer, before the grim pit-of-stomach sense of nausea gets too much (quick wave to my dear wife here) you're probably not going to be pitching in on these threads. So it's a bit of a self-selecting group...

For the average punter who has no knowledge or interest in pensions

And that's the major problem. The lack of knowledge on something so important and fundamental to how you hopefully see out your days is criminal. With all the content available on YouTube you only need to spend a few hours getting your head around some basic principles and it will pay dividends.

Retire to the coast.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-66939904

Basic awareness of pensions (and credit cards etc...) should be taught at schools.  Dunno if it is now, but it wasn't when I was at school and I was completely clueless until I landed a job by chance at a pensions firm.  Had zero guidance from my parents on it either.  Just wasn't spoken off at all.  Maybe they were clueless too

I'll be making sure my kids are financial aware.  Even it starts with Santa won't bring you the entire of the smyths catalogue for xmas as he has a budget boringness

If this is your only pension other than the State Pension, it’ll probably block you from receiving far, far more in State Benefits and the like.

I can't comment on what benefits are available, but if that was my only pot I'd be taking the 25% tax free lump sum and then drawing down just enough each year to keep me from paying any tax/ni. When it runs out I've got two state pensions and whatever benefits are available.

I don’t know that “most” people say that, but certainly its a number bandied around by people who have got used to a very comfortable standard of living

This get discussed on each STW pension thread. It's up to each of us to decide if we would like to spend our retirement on 3 5* cruises a year, sitting in a studio flat with the lights and heating off or somewhere in the middle.

Personally, I am somewhere in the middle!

I've got one or two tiny pensions from the various jobs I've had over the years, last time I looked they would give me an income of £600 a year. The issue I've got is that I've never got onto the housing ladder (for various reasons) so saving into a private pension is pointless as I need to prioritize getting a permanent roof over my head. That is all but impossible for me unless I get a big windfall somehow, to even afford a small flat with it's ripoff management fees etc I need to have a deposit of well over £60k thanks to a single income, my advancing age (42 currently so limited to 20 years mortgages) and that I've never earned decent money so the wage/multiples calculator screws me over. I have a review of it every year to see what, if anything, changes but it always gets further out of reach. Add in the crazy rental market and I'm resigned to working until I drop dead and never having financial stability. I worked out back in 2018 that if I went without everything - hobbies, holidays, car, takeaways etc - that I'd just about have enough to get a small place by 2045 but have crippling repayments due to only being allowed a short repayment term due to my age. Things are much worse now so I daren't look into it again.

Sometimes it's the reality that not everyone will get to retire, reduced hours is all I can really hope for.

Very few people can consider putting half your age as a percentage into a pension these days.

42 currently so limited to 20 years mortgages

You should be able to get a 25 year mortgage which takes you up to retirement age (which is, I believe, 68 for someone of your age).

Is there a difference between what someone will receive for their state pension depending on their age (ie, did the qualifying age change to get the current 'full' state pension) and if you miss out on it, you won't get as much state hand-out? Or am I making that bit up?

Personally, I am not in a great position - I have around £80k in pensions (aged 56) and haven't paid in for a few years due to circumstances - but we have just had a financial review and are having a 'presentation' meeting with the advisor shortly where they will, doubtless, tell us how screwed we are. My wife is 9 years younger than I am and it would be great if she could retire when I do, but I think I will end up working until she retires if my health allows. We are in a potentially 'good' position (I know it sounds heartless, but it *IS* the reality) in that her parents will have quite a decent pot for her and her brothers to inherit (assuming we outlive them and they don't end up in nursing homes).

49 here and paying the minimum workplace pension requirements. I won't be able to increase anything untill kids are through uni which will make me c.53/4 when I start piling money into pension and ISA. I'll also be starting to fund their pensions on a small scale, because young people don't think about that stuff and time is a very good thing for pension growth.

I consolidated my trail of career pensions to date to reduce management fees and earn a rebate with the combined larger sum. Just doing that makes each year equivalent to 14 months payments in a year.

I should be lowercase 'okay' but I don't have luxurious tastes.

At 52, your pension won't have time to be any good size, but as other have said its still the most efficient way of saving but it does lock away your money. The next best is an ISA.

In your shoes, I'd start the pension with what you can afford, and down size as soon as you retire, then put your desired annual needs for the first year in an ISA to draw on demand, and put the rest into an investment portfolio managed by a cheap bot service. Advice from a human is valuable, but the managing of the portfolio by a real human has been shown to generally be no better than a bot, but more pricey.

The down side of using your downsize funds is that you'll get clobbered for capital gains, which wouldn't happen if you had the equivalent value in a pension.

I dont have any pensions after watching Mrs SSS's dad lose the lot with Equitable Life, others getting stuffed with annuities in the wrong market conditions, friends getting pension schemes 'red' letters saying 'please feed me more', the govt having their sticky fingers in the pension pots occasionally and the spivs having a great time at your expense.

What have you done instead SSS?

after watching Mrs SSS’s dad lose the lot with Equitable Life

Yeah, my in-laws are in a similar situation – they should have been very comfortably off but then got shafted at the last. Partially because of the scheme he was in, partially because he was shafted by his employer and some very sneaky small print in his contract. They are doing very well, but they should have been in the position to be completely worry-free and being able to support their grand-kids through school/uni etc.

I have purchased property and land.
The main pension plan is to open a horse livery yard when i get a bit older as i have a small farm (purchased, not inherited).
This passive livery yard income with a bit of sideline farming and working part time should provide enough income.
I will develop some land as i get older and liquidate assets for income.

^ Fantastic advice for someone with no pension.

I dont have any pensions after watching Mrs SSS’s dad lose the lot with Equitable Life, others getting stuffed with annuities in the wrong market conditions, friends getting pension schemes ‘red’ letters saying ‘please feed me more’, the govt having their sticky fingers in the pension pots occasionally and the spivs having a great time at your expense.

I'm sorry but that attitude is plain bollocks. Sure, there have been some bad experiences for some but the Government Pension Protection Fund should stop these things happening again in the future with 90% of your pot protected.

I appreciate mortgage rates have/are rising, but the benefits of tax relief on pension payments I believe make more sense to add to pensions now than pay-off the mortgage early. I say that while over-paying on mine, but mainly because when my current low rate comes to an end on 2025 I'm not sure how much more it'll jump to, so giving myself the pain of higher payments now to get used to it.

At 45, nearly 46 I've also started taking the pension contributions more seriously too, but until now haven't really given it any thought other than 'die early' as a good plan. No kids to think about, no inheritance of any kind coming either, so if I want it, I need to get on with it now.

Personally I think dieing early is a terrible plan, I'm doing my best not to die at all, it's going well so far, as currently I'm not dead 😀

My intention is to die young at around 87yrs old. That's seemed to be around when my grandparents seemed to lose their quality of life.

As for the OP - create a Time Machine and go back and start paying a few quite into your pension from your first paycheck in your first job. Those first contributions at something like £20 a month have, due to compounding, yielded some of the best returns I've seen. My pension from my part time uni job is now worth more than the sum total I was paid over those couple of years!

If you can't be bothered to invent a Time Machine, start putting as much money as you physically can into a sipp / pension now from this months' pay check..

I'll second the Meaningful Money podcast - he's pretty good and advice seems pretty sensible for normal folk.

What's Vanguard?

Vanguard is an investment company. Their founder "invented" low cost index funds. Traditionally your hedge fund manager would take your monthly £100 and buy and sell individual shares and charge you a few% for the privilege.

With vanguard's index fund, when you give them £100 you just buy a fraction share of all the companies in the fund, or market and you average out the gains but mathematically more likely to beat the hedge fund manager over the long term.

Where Vanguard really win is instead of paying multiple percent in charges, because they're trading less trying to guess the market, their charges are fractions of a percent. These reductions in costs mean that you have more money each month invested and doing the heavy lifting and as such increasing your returns even more...

An investment company. Vanguard is known for having low fees. Fees are important to ensure you maximise your return.

I understood at least some of that. Thank you.

Vanguard.

Personally I think dieing early is a terrible plan, I’m doing my best not to die at all, it’s going well so far, as currently I’m not dead 😀

Dying too late is also shit though

vanguard are a (the?) market leader in low fee / low (er) risk investment in the stockmarket.  They have a few options with various risk profiles.  Makes life alot simpler if you want to invest and not faff about and be charged a bunch of £££s for not much

This thread has prompted me to take a look at my old employer pension I hadn’t looked at for ages – paid into for 8 years, worth £52k, projected pa pension at 65 (20 years from now) is……..drum roll….. £1250, so £100 a month.

Perhaps worth looking at where that's invested, who with and in what funds & what the fees are. In 20 years you could reasonably expect that to double in value twice, so worth circa £200k. £200k would likely offer a good bit more than £100pm.

Those figures seem a tad optimistic based on my recent reading, but never the less, the principle is sound.

I found that most default pension settings are unnecessarily conservative given the timescales of the investment.

The illustrations says 'in todays money' £1250 - so presume it'll actually be more, but when you take off inflation and the like its the equivalent of £1250 today.  Well at least thats what I think it is saying to me....

Probably good advice to look at, its been sat doing very little for a long time.

If you can pay off mortgage and then dump that money and more into savings.

Makes sense, but not as an alternative to tax-efficient pension investing. Unless OP’s house is somewhere with astonishing house inflation.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this, but OP, don't you have an obligatory little employer's pension?

Perhaps it didn't apply to your sphere of work/ company size, but it's been obligatory for employers to contribute for the last 10 years. To ( try to) prevent situations like this from occurring.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/ten-years-of-automatic-enrolment-in-workplace-pensions/ten-years-of-automatic-enrolment-in-workplace-pensions-statistics-and-analysis#the-amount-saved-into-workplace-pensions

Until 2018 the minimum contribution required under Automatic Enrolment was 2% of qualifying earnings, with a minimum of 1% contributed from the employer. In April 2018, this minimum increased to 5% of qualifying earnings, with a minimum of 2% from the employer. In April 2019 the phased introduction of AE was completed when the minimum contribution increased to 8% of qualifying earnings with a minimum of 3% from the employer.

< goes off to check if OP mentioned being self employed...>