To ask how much is in your pension pot and your contribution %

Precisely@Papyrophile. DH was self employed for most of his career.

If you are self-employed/freelance or an entrepreneur, then you need to pay particularly close attention to your pension. Because only you are contributing to it! (Mine owns one industrial building, close to a key road junction) Anyone working independent of an employer must have a proper legitimate structure for retirement saving. It is one of those situations where failure to follow the rules exactly is most likely to go wrong. Take proper advice. Not from me. I'm neither an accountant nor an investment adviser, but I worked for a huge pension fund in the USA in the 80s, and the general principles are:

If it sounds wonderfully promising, it won't be as great all the time.

If the advertised return is attractively high, halve it... they were lucky that year.
There is no free lunch.

Any investment that promises to perform consistently outside the averages is simply lying. It's possible to get lucky for a year or two, but for most non expert people, most of the time the best option is to stick your money into the cheapest fund (which is the one with the lowest charges) that indexes the S&P500, and stop thinking about it for 10 years. Across every five and 10 year period since 1929, the S&P has matched or just beaten inflation. And for retirement preparation, that is seriously most of what you want to achieve.

Oh I'm 38

25k pot. I've just increased my contribution to 8% as my employer only pays 3%

The biggest pension issue for me has been state pension. Retired from education at age 57, five years ago and as the LGPS was 'opted out' status, despite me paying more NI than a lot of folk, I was not eligible for a full state pension.
I've just paid £2,700 to top it up.
If you've worked in NHS, local government, education etc do make sure you get a state pension forecast from DWP.

Public sector careers are rarely as precarious as the private sector. Income, particularly where pensions are concerned, needs to be assessed over 40 years. I know very few highfliers who have maintained very high incomes across entire careers. There are few white hairs on the average trading floor.

I earnt six figures mid/late 80s to mid 90s. At 35 I was completely burnt out. 30 years on I just about earn six figures in the public sector. It suited to work locally when the dc were small. DH went sideways aged about 54, reducing his income by £400k to do something sustainable but public sector for the next 10/15 years.

It’s a big issue in professional roles in local government too - paid vastly less than private sector equivalents and has started to seriously hurt recruitment.

When I see what people who come to our company are paid in the Civil Service I know they are very underpaid (even when pension contributions are taken into account - there's a massive gap) - granted that's just my experience - this latest report backs it up. I don't know anyone saying teachers of nurses are well paid either. But it's all relative - if you are on minimum wage of course anyone earning more than you can feel like they are well paid. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/22/chronic-low-pay-hurting-civil-service-staff-morale-recruitment-say-mps

For some quite unknown reason I was always a bit anal about pensions and savings and contributed as much as I was allowed from the moment I started work on the basis that if it never hit the bottom line, I would never miss it. I was unusual though.

@Tedaaaaaaaaah @Waitingforgeorge

It depends. Inside the M25 one can earn significantly more in the private sector than in the civil service/local government/NHS/Education. Outside London, particularly in the North, those employers are the employers of choice paying more usually than other local sectors.

For the next generation, the gold plated public sector pensions are likely to be significantly diluted.

Well I’m not sure I totally agree that people working for the state are that badly paid, but yes it is pension ahead of immediate reward. Those that ignore pension saving in the private sector are hanging themselves out to dry and being aided by government legislation (although that has improved a little).

No not for my kids or me - in general, it seems a complicated choice.
I was reflecting on people who work for the state - having an amazing pension but a low salary - in a sense opting for pension over home ownership, as they don't have a choice to invest in pensions or save a deposit for a house.

Ermmm, I knew that but thanks. It’s still annoying to me however

Goodness what a strange thing to annoy you. Of course its not a literal pot. But "pension pot" is commonly used terminology to describe the total amount of pension contributions and capital growth that you have saved towards retirement.

What do you mean? Mine is defined contribution and is a "pot" - I.e. a bunch of money invested that I can't access until I am 57

It’s not a ‘pot’ ffs this grinds on me so much

Mid 30s and have £18k in mine, earn pretty much the average salary. Employer contributes a whopping 2%. I do 3%. I know it's kind of not enough but im in my mid 30s and i've been T1 diabetic for almost all of those years. With pension age going up and up, although I'm still complication free, the reality for me is that I may well not be forever, it will probably catch up with me at some point and I'll probably die before I retire, or at least be in a position where i'm not likely to be jetting off on holidays. I do want to do all that whilst I still can, so having that money now is more valuable. I do have 18 months take home salary in savings, and will have the mortgage paid off in less than 10 years though, which I appreciate is probably more fortunate than most have who are on the average salary, but tying it up in something age restricted is not for me.

My pensions forecast thinks I'll have an income of £19.5k/yr including an allowance of £10.6k state pension if I carry on with the current, so not amazing but better than a kick in the teeth assuming the state pension still exists, plus can definitely downsize from a 3 bed house.

Have to agree. The majority of time people on MN are talking about getting a top up of UC, can't afford a food shop, living on the breadline, yet have pension pots of hundreds of thousands 🤔

For kids or for you do you mean?

Kids - deposit above pension
You - pension above overpaying mortgage, especially if you’re a HR tax payer

On another thread, a poster commented that if the choice was between over-paying a mortgage and contributing to a pension, the right answer was to fund the pension as the earlier years are the most valuable for growth. Obviously, though, securing a roof comes first.

Don't forget you are likely to have some state pension as long as you're contracted in.

I'm not sure downsizing is always a viable alternative now near me. Bungalows tend to be more expensive here and I don't fancy living in a terrace, which are often cheaper, with steep steps etc. The new builds tend to be poorly planned and miles away from services.

I was reading Waitingforgeorge as asking about deposit for the kids not for own home and I should say my answer was on that understanding. Completely agree that securing your own home is usually going to be far more important that maxing pension contributions.

For me, the decision to buy a house over increasing pension contributions was easy. I will always need to live somewhere, and so will my children. I could die before I reach pension age!

I had to extend the term when I had kids so that it was more affordable, so will be paying it off until 68, but I wouldn't have had that flexibility to reduce my monthly housing costs if I were renting. My mortgage payments on a 3-bed house are about 1/4 of the going rental rate in this area.

When I'm older, and the kids have flown the nest, I'm hoping I will have the option to downsize and release some capital from the house to live on if my pension pot is too piddly.

The decision between saving for a deposit/paying the mortgage versus paying into a pension is a hard one.

I don't think it necessarily has to be a choice in that under the current rules a private pension can be a very tax efficient way of saving for helping the kids/paying the mortgage. If you put money into the pension now, with the aim that you'll have more than you need for your retirement in the pension, then if all goes well you can use the tax free lump sum to pay down the mortgage/give kids a deposit. If things then don't go as expected and you do need the money for retirement then you've still got it. It works particularly well if you are currently paying a high tax rate (especially over 100k) and have kids who are likely to reach early adulthood as you are in your late 50s/60s. That seems to be a good chunk of mumsnet! Of course the downside is that the pension rules might well change and it could look less good if the access age/tax rules were to change in the future.