[Closed] Pensions - how screwed are you?

Utterly screwed.

I'm 41 and have no pension to speak of.

I am insured though. So my current plan is to drop dead at 65 and leave a hefty payout for the kids.

<hollow laugh>

I'm planning to work until I die. Doesn't seem to be much of an alternative, really - I'll never get a state pension.

Pensions are one of those things our parents got but we won't.

If you think you're screwed with £43k already stashed in a pension then you and I have vastly different interpretations of 'screwed'. I'm 33 and have pretty much the sum total of f*** all after the armed forces rejigged their pensions.

I'm aiming for death in service.

So what happens if you get to retiring age and you've no pension? Do you just get shoved onto the street and moved along with a hose?

Death in service sounds like a plan. At best, I might be able to retire at 70. And by retire, I mean maybe be able to drop down to 3 days a week.

About £300,000 over two pension pots. I'm 50 ( 😮 ) and don't want to be working in 10 years time so need to up the contributions (and maximise ISA use etc).

Not sure. Maybe euthanasia will be legalised by then. Tbh I'd be having a great few years followed by a the certainty of a relatively painless dignified death sounds pretty attractive...

My forecast shows £100 a month based on a planned 9% year on year growth!!!! Makes you think whether it's worth spending half of the saving now and enjoying it, just in case I don't get to the age..

i started a pension at 34. (am now 36)

i was busy 'following my dreams' as a starving musician until then. Many/most of my friends are also 30-something musicians and i'd say about 10% of them have pensions.

And as noted, with 43K stashed already, you are probably waaaaaaay ahead of the average by now.

In fact that's about £255 a month ever since you were 21?

Hmm. Think we're into humblebrag territory here....

44 and no pension, rented housing association house as well, I earn less than £15k/year so there's no point in worrying about my lack of pension

I'm 38, got 27k in one pot that is locked and will grow in time, company pension restarts in November hence the locked pot, predicted income is £12k a year when I retire, not great but could be worse!

Im 48, have (i think) £63k in the pot. Not sure what it gives me but not a great deal i suspect.

'Not' it turns out. My wife has got a NHS final salary pension that costs us a fortune and will cost even more from this month and I've got an old RBS staff final salary pension that I can't pay into anymore but my IFA has told me is worth it's weight in gold. I haven't paid any pension for the last 5 years due to various things - but we start the new company pension scheme next year which again will be expensive but should represent 10% a month between me and my employer.

What I could without though is another bloody redundancy and associated couple of years of clawing my income back up.

Most of my mates don't have a pension and won't until the law forces them to have one - 'the plan' seems to be either "well I'll have a house" or the unwavering belief that they'll become much wealthier in the years to come, but being we're all late 30's early 40's now there's not much left in the way of career progression left.

I'm trying to convince my youngest son to become an MP. At least he'll be ok & screw everyone else.

im 51, dont understand pensions at all, have an engineering pension which i dont know its worth, and when i retire will have half a firefighters pension which i dont know its worth either. yearly statements get filed away without any understanding. i just think theres nothing i can do to make it better or worse so it is what it is.

😯 are we supposed to save up?

I'm 37 and as far as I can see am halfway through a massive Ponzi scheme, but this is a special one because they've heavily reduced what they're promising to pay out partway through and at the same time put the amount they take off you up, so it's like a Super Ponzi or something. They can't tell you what you might get because they've reserved the right to **** you over again at their leisure until you retire. I think.

Actually I lie, I do have a pension. Based on me leaving in a few years and getting a proper job, I will get about £14k lump sum followed by £5k from 65 - 68, rising to £11.5k from 68. Which is not bad. My wife on the other hand, has nothing. So you can divide anything I've got by 2.

Think we're into humblebrag territory here....

Depends on how you look at it. We are constantly told that to avoid retirement poverty we need to save £big figure. My saving rate won't stay the same going forward (I'm looking at a job move with a massive pay cut). I figure we are all screwed to varying degrees..

I started at 20, got hoodwinked into a private pension plan which was subsequently deemed to have been mis-sold as I could have joined my employer pension.
Private pension company had to top up my plan to put me back where I would have been had I joined the company plan.
Then moved to an employer that paid a frankly unheard of 15% into the pension without any employee contribution.
I'm hoping to go part time by the time I get to 55, currently 45 and around £250k in various schemes.
Off all my financial decisions in my life, I think making a pension provision was probably the wisest.

45 here and been paying into a private one since 18, although minimum contributions until I was about 30 then started upping payments regularly now pay in £300 a month and last statement earlier this year was 90k another good 15 years and plan to retire/semi at 60!!!!

Im going to sell the wife to medical science and then go and get 8 ace. See where the cards land.

Final salary pension. Sounds great on the surface, but my inner cynic predicts I'll reach the point i want to retire only to find its imploded, my money has been spunked by some fund manager and I've suffered 30 years of lower wages for no good reason. Ah well, I've always fancied a job on the b and q paint counter in my dotage.

If it all goes Pete tong, my new plan is some fraud of a sufficient level to get me 3 squares a day in a suitably civilised open prison. Somewhere by the sea would be nice.

Pension forecasts are notoriously poor. For example I am on a 24 paypoint pay scale, but the forecast takes no account of this.

I am very fortunate to have a RAF pension deferred to 65, and now also be in a job with a good pension scheme. The mortgage is planned to pay off at 60 too.

I'm 40. I'm not expecting to get a state pension - they will be all but gone by the time I'm allowed to take one (currently 67).

Having been a contractor for a good few years, I started a SIPP. About 70% is being punted on some long odds aim stocks (oil) + 30% funds - only worth £20k at the moment, but if they ever get the oil in the Falkland islands out of the ground I could be laughing.

I've been with my current employer for 3 years this November. I have to put in 4% for them to give me 8% on top.
I actually pay in 8% so in theory there is 16% of my salary going in the pot every month, but I have no idea what the total fund is - guessing be similar to the SIPP.

If it all goes to shit, I'm going to take up hang gliding the week before I have to leave work as the life cover is pretty good.

Currently withdrawing my pension and have been since I was 50.

It was a non-contributory final salary pension so you could say I was lucky, but then I also turned down the chance of various other jobs that, on the face of it, looked to pay a higher salary but without the same pension benefit.

I'm now working part-time and I calculated that paying into a workplace pension would get me a bit of tax relief and an additional contribution (10%) from my employer, so ALL my wages go into this new pension 😆

[i]And as noted, with 43K stashed already, you are probably waaaaaaay ahead of the average by now. [/i]

Then you're all bollox'd.

A pot of £43k is barely worth £100 per month as a pension.

I'm in my 50's and have paid into pensions since starting work in my late teens. Planning to retire by 60.

Think we're into humblebrag territory here....

Depends on how you look at it. We are constantly told that to avoid retirement poverty we need to save £big figure. My saving rate won't stay the same going forward (I'm looking at a job move with a massive pay cut). I figure we are all screwed to varying degrees..

fair enough. sorry, there's a lot of humblebragging goes on on stw.

good luck with the new job, i'm a big advocate of following one's dreams and hang the consequences (within reason, ha)

I have something that ive been watching go down concurrent with the oil price.....makes me think that my pensions heavily skewed into oil funds......which i thought folks would have learnt from the enron story.

How ever i have investments of my own which are similar in value to my pension and growing quite reasonably.

Speaking off "death in service" I foolishly told Mrs Jay she gets about £250k if I die, now I've got to check the brakes on my bike before I ride.

Be based on him cashing it now yes BT given annuities are currently on their arse and he's got another 35 years to pay in.....

Let's just say I'm banking on being an only child and the folks not leaving it to the cats home

I wonder what's going to happen in future? Given auto enrollment, the next step I could (naively) see happening is a means tested state pension - not sure if that would work at all but it sort of pisses in the face of even bothering in the first place.

Then you're all bollox'd.

A pot of £43k is barely worth £100 per month as a pension.

I'm in my 50's and have paid into pensions since starting work in my late teens. Planning to retire by 60.

indeed. this is the worry. [url= http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-3067305/First-time-buyers-need-earn-41k-high-house-prices-push-homes-reach.html ]The average first time buyer is now in their 30's, and the average FTB house costs roughly 9 years of their wage.[/url]

Dare I suggest (without vitriol) that you managed to buy a house in slightly less onerous conditions?

i'm not trying to start a generational slanging match here. it just occurred to me how much things have changed lately. My parents generation bought houses in their 20s, had the mortgage paid off in their 40s because it was only about 3 years salary, and then had 20 years or so to save up for retirement - as well as decent pensions.

My generation are buying houses at 35, with mortgages to run until their 60s (my wife will be 65 at the end of our mortgage term), little time to save up, and with much less generous pensions.

As for the people who are currently 21 or under, i shudder to think.

You're right, we are all bolloxed...

Depends how much of a social system is left. Regardless of your political affiliation it's been true for quite a while if you have an inadequate private pension, you'll end up far worse off than having nothing. Income support used to trigger all kinds of relief on council tax and eligibility for property maintenance grants and so on.

I started paying into my pension when I was 18. I paid my last payment last June, where did the last 40 years go. Only 56 weeks till I retire. 🙂

Wingsuit base-jumping is my retirement plan. I'm only partly joking.

I guess I'm lucky being self-employed, and with a business that's not so physically taxing that I'll have to give it up - can just keep working.

Maybe Logan's Run isn't so far-fetched after all.

errrrrrrrrrmmmm pension?

Couple of pots from previous employers totaling about 100k. Now at 43 have 10 years service on a company final salary scheme which was accruing at 45ths. Can no longer contribute so have dropped to 60ths so looking at how to invest the 5% I was contributing. When I initially changed jobs in 2006 I took a 40% pay cut purely for the pension. One of my better decisions in life.

Starting saving into my pension aged 24 (now 43) and am looking like I'll have c£6k a year to live off so I'm screwed, despite doing the right thing and trying to make a provision for myself. IIRC I'll need c£1m pot to get an income of £25k and I'm somewhat off that, not least because L&G managed to have less money in my pot last year than was in there the year before...!

Don't expect state pension to exist by the time I retire. Will almost certainly work till past 70, although who'll employ me and at what wage I've no idea. Hopefully the robots will have taken over by then and we'll all be on a basic state income.

Stopped paying into my pension in 2011 in an attempt to save to buy a house, to find prices have gone from £250k to £450k in that time, which I've no way of keeping up with. Have moved out of London to try and resolve that one.

When the sub-Boomer generation (mine) realise to what degree housing 'wealth' is not real wealth and they can't just 'cash it in' to fund their retirements and what their retirements are eally going to be like (having sunk everything into property and not saved properly for our retirements), well there'll be plenty of jobs going for riot Police.

I'm only half joking about that - pension-wise we are so seriously up the creek, but funnily enough, subsequent governments have failed to tell us... and when the masses finally realise how dire their futures look, well...

Coincidentally, I've just been looking at what the state pension is - £155 per week [i]if[/i] you've been contributing NI for 35 years up until April 6th (from what I can gather).
I was made redundant after 33 years of contributions, so can't see if that means I'll get a bit of it or sod all. They don't make it simple.

I'll need c£1m pot to get an income of £25k

[quote=DezB ]I was made redundant after 33 years of contributions, so can't see if that means I'll get a bit of it or sod all. They don't make it simple.
You'll get almost the full amount but you can also top it up

I think Wiltshire farm foods are pursuing a more aggressive pricing strategy, so possibly, yes

No pension here, I've always eyed pension companies with suspicion, I just don't trust them with my cash!
However, we do have a plan to have 4 or 5 rental flats all paid off for our retirement 'pension'.
It's going well, we are on track.

Holy crap. I've just read that as a rule of thumb if you've not been contributing to a pension then you should divide your age by half and put away that as a percentage of your salary until you retire. That makes my monthly contribution about £400 for the next 30 odd years. And I've got a kid on the way. And I don't own a house yet. 😥

Anyone want to buy a bike? I can't afford to run it anymore!

I'm 40 , and pretty much screwed.

Always had work ones, but at this point that doesn't add up to a huge amount. OTOH I've got a short life expectancy.

TBH it's one of the likely terminal crises for feudal capitalism, this. Pretty soon we'll have an entire generation working to pay for people 2 generations ahead to retire comfortably, while watching their own retirement age increase and pensions collapse, not to mention working benefits- and simultaneously telling their kids that they have to pay for things they never had to, and will likely never be able to afford their own house, or repay their £50000 (and spiralling) of student debt, or receive any number of other things that were taken for granted (and which were inexplicably affordable in the ruins of a world war, but not in the greatest time of plenty in human history)

Very optimistic about my future...

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Not being funny, but will you need an income of £25k? (assuming mortgage planning has that paid off)

Jeremy Corbyn (or any long serving MP) has a final salary pot worth £1.6m for his pension of £50k pa.

Personally not in as good shape as I was due to divorce, I had always saved ontop of company contributions. Given a big part of my job is managing money for pension plans you could say I practice what I preach. Truth is our and future generations will not be as wealthy as our parents and the Golden age of final salary schemes

Got one pension with about 29k in it(from another work, plus when i didn't have a pension for a good few year i contracted out, so I got about 5 year of those, thought i might aswell pocket those as i'll manage the 35 year requiremet, my wages where terrible for that pension so i wasn't contributing much) and i've another that just started with the work last year, with the government requirement. paying 1% and 3% in to that. the works cotribution due to go up to 4% i think, my plan is to start bumping my contributions incremetally over the next 20 year.

I'm 38. so fairly screwed. I really should sit down and do some sums to see where i want to be.

What i really need to do is buy my self a cheap house, now, 15/20 year mortgage so I don't need to worry about rent when i'm older. That's my main concern at the moment, what ever amount pension I get will probably just be to offset what ever work i'll need to do to fund whatever lifestyle I want to live in the future.

Ive been saving in a pension since i started work. Current one is good and the equivalent of 18% ends up in there. Still young. But when you look at the projections for defined contribution you need silly amounts to be able to live like current pensioners.

Still i'm going to do the best i can as i dont think relying on the government and state is a viable option either 40 years down the line.

Not amazing but better than many. I'm 37, last year's statement said there was around £70k in my company pension, with another £20k or so in long term savings/investments elsewhere. Mortgage should be paid off within 10 years. There may be an inheritance in the next few years to help things along (my sister and I are my grandfather's only living relatives).

I'm about to start a new job so intending to bump up contribution levels a bit more when setting up the new arrangements.

My advice to young people I work with and my own kids is to start your pension early and let intrest do the work for you.

30k @ 7% growth and £200 added each month for twenty years is £250,000 which wont give you a brilliant annuity income but is still a substantial lump sum.

I'm lucky in that pensions are compulsory over here. Everyone has at least one (State) anyone who works probably has a company pension plus another private/investment one on the go.

I'll not be rich when i retire, but I'll be able to live. Will probably be working until compulsory retirement add i didn't really join the world of work until my mid 30s.

When I looked at transferring my UK pension pot over, i got laughed at as it was so small compared to the time I'd spent paying in. And that was one of the better UK company pensions around at the time. (But i was only there a couple of years)

My basic plan is tonwork until I'm mid sixties, give any property to the kids, buy a camper and spend the next ten years travelling, living of the state pension and savings after which I expect my body will expire and pensions wont matter

I don't think it's fair to say that previous governments haven't warned us about the reality of future state pensions. I picked up the message loud and clear at age 21, in 2001, so under Blair's second government, right? At the time I'd started as a trainee investment manager at a small private bank. I was on a final salary scheme there, making over-payments on the student loan, and using some of my ISA allowance (not all of it, it wasn't a great time in the City...). Whilst the job security and benefits were solid it was still working in a bank, right, so I quit after two years to get back into academia. And therein lies the rub.

During the PhD and postdocs most waive their pension contributions as the salaries are so small but as we (and I presume other professions) are effectively in training for so long it means we don't start pension contributions until our early-mid thirties... I'm now a state researcher in France and even if I worked until the (current) compulsory retirement age I wouldn't have done enough service for a full pension. You should see a French payslip too, they often run onto two A4 pages with all the deductions and weird calculations the state makes.

In essence, I've got a job I love with a mediocre salary but ace job security. What'll happen to me in the 2040s, I've no idea... So depressing but I'm going out cycling now, am in the Alps 😀
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£250,000 which wont give you a brilliant annuity income but is still a substantial lump sum.

You haven't factored inflation into the calculation - £250,000 in twenty years time will be worth much less than it is today.

My pension plan statements suggest that at 50 I have funded a lot of expensive cars and fine wine for some spiv in the city but I end up in a cardigan with holes eating dog food. I plan to work till I drop.

We recently found out that the sister in law is mid 40s with no pension, and a 100% interest only mortgage (Edinburgh new town so should be appreciating nicely but.....) and just lost her nicely paid financial job (£60k+) she's just had to borrow £400 to get her through the month.

Although my pension is being squeezed I feel better about it.

36, One UK pension pot of around 1k in 2001 - not checked back on that one for a while.
Then about 11 years as agency/contractor not paying into anything
Just short of my 2 years in the not quite gold plated company scheme when I move to Oz so I got my cash back but the company got their 8k back out of that one 🙁 👿
Finally getting some paid in here in Oz where the minimum company contribution is nearly 10% just checked up to nearly $8k(Aus)

I don't expect to ever buy a house, I work with my brain so as long as that is good I'll keep working. After that it's lottery wins and any inheritance. It's a really depressing situation if you keep thinking about it but in reality I'm doing what I can. The amount of money required to service the promises made to people already is staggering (the Steel Works thread highlighted it like many other companies is mostly a gaping pension black hole with a bit of industry on the side) the monumental increase in housing prices that has mostly benefited those that had the pay bugger all in pension get a magic bag of cash every month till you die no strings attached is going to hurt a lot more people.

I'm sorted as I've got one of those gold plated NHS pensions. It's worth loads apparently 😯

Being slightly more realistic though it would appear , from the statements they've sent me, that despite my contributions having gone up a couple of times recently and apparently going up again this month I'll be able to claim the pension when I'm 69 and it'll be worth a fairly paltry sum.

Not quite what I keep reading about how this fantastic pension will leave me retiring and living a lifestyle similar to Hugh Hefner!

Those pension return figures are terrible. £1M for £25k! The only reason I can see to pay into a pension is the free money from your employer. As I don't have one of those my meagre savings have been going into property and shares. Not a huge amount but it's currently returning £400ish a month, plus a bit of capital growth. The nice thing is it is doing that now so I can reinvest. I imagine I'll still do a bit of work well after 'retirement'. Not sure if this is a good plan but the only alternative is dying young.

Many are sadly screwed especially if reliant on public sector ponzi pensions

And the interest only mortgagae route to financial salvation may also be a disappointment

Not sure about the term feudal capitalism NW - although it has a nice ring - but our selfishness and lack of planning will have adverse impacts in future generations. Either that or the public pot ends up being considerably smaller than expected.

30k @ 7% growth and £200 added each month for twenty years is £250,000 which wont give you a brilliant annuity income but is still a substantial lump sum.

7% growth - where the hell did you get a fund that gives you that? Stocks, especially oil, have tanked this year. Started a pension last year, the £10k I put in over the year is still worth £10k. I make that 0% growth?

I'm with Grum, think I'll take up base jumping when I retire. Always wanted to try it but still being young(ish), too much of a risk at this stage in life.

I'm 26 so I work till I die, I think.

My pension plan....

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I've got 2 private pensions. one is ok. One makes me feel like I've been raped. But its nowhere near what I'll need to exist at more than a subsistence level in retirement, given that the state pension will be a quaint memory by the time I reach 'retirement age'

In all seriousness, I've already accepted that I'll be working till I drop. If you've not, and you think you're going to have a 'retirement' that in even the slightest tiny way resembles the one the baby boomers are presently enjoying, you're delusional!

I think the private pensions industry is going to end up making the whole banking/PPI mis-selling scandal look like a minor accounting error at a corner shop

Mine has been substantially above 7% for many years, helped this year by me asking them to move it out of oil companies. I posted that suggestion on here btw and got much derision from the usuals, oh how I laughed.

I dont have a massive sum but logging in online and watching it earn more than I used to earn for working is quite nice and makes you realise how the rich get richer.

If both sets of parents die without having to go into a home for years then we're OK.

If they go on forever racking up huge care home bills, then we're a bit screwed.

Our main priority is being mortgage and debt free before we are 60.

We both have small pensions, but our total pot combined is probably worth 40k at the minute.

Not being funny, but will you need an income of £25k? (assuming mortgage planning has that paid off)

I love the cosy, comfortably-off, middleclasstrackworld assumption that everybody owns at least one property.

Meanwhile ... back in the real world.....

I'm not too worried about myself (48) and my wife (50) as we could retire now in reasonable comfort (with some lifestyle changes), however I'm rather more worried for the situation when my kids get to retirement age.

well if financial planning comes into it it seems crazy to save blindly for something that may not happen at the cost of not having your own roof over your head....meaning you need to save even more to pay the rent during a time in your life that may not happen when you have no income. - all while paying inflated costs to rent someone elses house - surely ?

Unless you need to be flexible for work moves every few years then i look at it like paying your debts off before you save.

But i guess thats my opinion YMMV that said - i started my pension when i was 23 and put in the max i had to to get max company contributions - but no more. my own investments are outperforming my pension by a significant %age. How ever although my company pensions going down and the markets depressed - the number of units i get each month is huge compared to 3-4-5 years ago so if the market ever picks up ill see huge gains. MEanwhile its just sitting there doing its thing.

Another one screwed here.
I'm 39 and only started a pension a few years back so it will never be worth much.
As with others here the only thing I can see working for me is that we have a nice house in the South east and when we retire we can downsize and move to a cheaper part of the country.

Something just doesn't add up with all of this. Is the only way to make money in this country any more just to keep selling/renting over inflated property to one another?

Something has to give, suspect it's not going to be pretty!

I'm 43 and my wife 40.
She's been teaching for 16 years, when she started it was generally understood that you'd retire at around 60.
Recent changes to teachers pensions have scuppered this - and they are now expected to work until they are 68.

I wasted my 20s and didn't start earning 'proper money' until I was 33.
I've been paying into the defined contributions scheme at work for the last 9 years, I pay in 5% and my employer matches it.
I can't remember how much is in there but it's not a lot.

We don't have any inheritance coming out way - my folks don't own a property and the in-laws won't be leaving us anything.

We are paying off the mortgage on a great house, which I don't want to sell in order to fund our retirement.

So, in short - I've got 20 years to build a retirement fund.
On the plus side I have a job which is largely desk based, there is no reason I can't work part time beyond mid-60's
I'm also pretty handy with woodwork tools and can turn out saleable items fairly easily.

I've been to a few school reunions lately and it amazed me how many people have nothing and no plan. made me feel quite good about my own crap situation.

I plan stuff and so decided that I'd want a pension pot of £600k at 65 so working back assuming 7% growth I needed to build up £150k at 44 so did that. Now just build up ISAs so got a mix plus my home which I could downsize from/move to a cheaper area if wanted.

Buying my 1st house as soon as I started work in the mid 90s helped me a lot but I don't earn a silly big salary.

This thread has re-affirmed what a fortunate position I'm in, despite not being a 'high earner'

Started in a FS pension scheme 10 years ago age 22, and if joint company / Union statements are to be trusted, no intention of closing for current members.

Also received some inheritance as one of my parents died a few years ago. So long term financially I should be OK.

Do feel for the next generation. Inter-generational inequality could become a rising issue as wages / assets / houses stagnate.