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

I am mid 40s and have £360k in a pension pot. It now grows at about £30 - £50k a year and I vary how much I put in.

I have always worked and nearly always contributed something, but probably not more than £5k a year. I have always had a higher than median income, so am relatively priviledged. But have also always lived a bit like a student. I still do, because there are children to support!

Due to income draw down options (as opposed to having to buy an annuity), I think it's even worth contributing even if you don't start til 50. That might buy you a few years before the state retirement age kicks in.

I am 50 and have nothing saved for retirement, I am a teacher so I sort of expect I will keel over in the classroom one day and that will be that.

I’ve got a DB scheme which will pay 47k a year if I keep contributing until 67. There’s no way I’m working that long though so will be retiring early with a reduced amount. Will also have full state pension and mortgage paid off, so will be fine.

I wouldn’t want to be surviving on state benefits at pension age, as I want to spend a lot of time on holidays, weekends away and doing my hobbies, some of which are expensive. Some people are happy with a quiet life at home though.

@EmpressSoleil I agree with you. There's a limit to what people can do once they're 50 and you need to be realistic, plus renting is a whole different ballgame - eg in your situation with £10k rent, if your annuity is anything less than £20k you're literally just breaking even compared to having nothing at all (£10k housing benefit, £9k state pension) and you're also losing out on the add on benefits that you would get. Just to get £20k you'd need a £400k pot which most people won't be able to be anywhere near. You've got to work with what you've got.

Don't forget, for those of us who are already in our fifties, we didn't have the current type of workplace pension set-up, and indeed a lot of us lost what work pensions we'd managed to get going during the 90s and 00s merger firesale.

The most important thing any tenant over 50 can do is get themselves into some kind of social housing imo. Takes the pressure off massively.

60k at 38.

contribution is £870 a month, 15% from me and 7.5% employer - just recently upped as IFA told me it needed to be £1200 a month to retire at 60 on £25k a year in today’s money - trying to get up to that!

51, £657k, £60k now the allowance has gone up.

I am in the same situation too - very very small pension pot, low salary for a long time although good now, but need to pay off debt. Don't know if there will even be a state pension when I come to retire.

I am mid 40s and now need to look at how I can put enough away for both myself and DH, as it is looking likely that DH will lose his job due to an injury at work last year, he is effectively disabled and due to his injury is limited on what he can do. Can't sit for more than 1 - 2 hours, definitely can't do any more manual handling type work.

Oh this is basically where I'm at. Happy to see I'm not the only one in this position. And that you're tackling it in a positive way.

Can't believe how many people seem to have a loose 600k in the pot!

I am also self-employed.

The primary incentive of paying into a pension as a self-employed person is the alternative of a retirement in penury. I find that pretty motivating, to be honest. But the fact that my contributions were tax deductible (meaning my 12K became 18K) was also pretty incentivising.

Sounds about right for the type of pension the NHS offer!

It would take a pension pot of about £700k to get 35cm per year pension so that what your final salary is approx worth

A 23 .7% NHS pension contribution surely that cant be correct 🙏🏽🙏🏽

You can’t possibly have 35 years contributions at 40 if you started work at 18? Who is telling you that you have enough years in for a full pension?

This thread is giving me anxiety! Both me and dh are self employed- there is no incentive for the SE to pay into a pension apart from tax deductions but the available schemes are rubbish and no employer contribution of course.

How do you find out your pension? 🤣 I'm 28 and always worked and paid small amounts into it but I don't know where it is 🤣

Thanks for that post @DryIce was about to repeat what you’ve just said. We want to maintain our current standard of living in retirement, we don’t want our dcs to look after us - we’ll need to pay for some help. We want choices. All those wants cost money which is why my £250k isn’t enough.

Mumsnet is full of higher earners, it's not generally representative.

I have about £35k in a pension pot, contributions are about 8% between me and my my employer. I've never worked in a company that paid more that 3-4%.

I mean that you're not contributing to your own financial security in retirement - you're relying on the public purse to support you. While I understand the notion of the "squeezed middle" I don't think state dependency is something that public policy should encourage.

About 6k

Sorry its MN i mean £1mill.😁

Rather than comparing current pots etc, I think it is worth working backwards from your estimated income needed in retirement and how long between now and then.

The reason these figures sound enormous is because of the huge amount of capital you need to draw income. E.g. a £1m pot at a conservative 4% drawdown would give an income of £40k. Which is obviously an above average income, but some people earn more than this and want to continue their lifestyle in retirement - or, like a PP, I am planning mine to support my partner as well.

If your income requirements are lower, and especially if you anticipate receiving the state pension or having a partner with pension/income, your pot need not be so high. For example if 25k is sufficient, and you've paid off your mortgage etc, you only need 15k above the state pension which is more like 350k in total. And 4% is conservative - you may look at 5 or 7 which could be more like 210k.

These fogures are very rough, but im just trying to illustrate that the pot figures can vary wildly because of the multiple and target income. And it is worth remembering that there are a lot of other contributions that go into your final pot - tax relief, employer contributions, capital growth - so you are not personally required to contribute everything.

Hang on, I'm not "not contributing". I've got 35 years of NI contributions and I'm still working full time now, paying my own rent as I've always done which is money that goes directly into the public housing pot. However there's no point me breaking my neck paying into a pension that will just be spent on rent once I'm no longer working. I'd rather spend it on funding a gradual wind down and what travel I can as I get older which is why even though I don't have loads I'll start dipping into it when I'm 60.

As a mum who had to gave up work to look after my DC with special needs, threads like these make me feel a bit queasy. I think this isn't a very good snapshot of what reality is like for many people.

Age: 48
Salary: £105K
Pot size: circa £300K
Contribution: 15.5% (me) 7.5% (employer)

Planning to retire at about age 62/63

This link to the Which Pension Calculator is really easy to use. https://www.which.co.uk/money/pensions-and-retirement/options-for-cashing-in-your-pensions/your-options-for-cashing-in-your-pension/pension-calculator-how-much-money-youll-have-a9DH71u5ilAl

caveat if you are renting then it might affect housing benefit

This is the main one. My rent is 10k a year. So any private pension up to that amount, they'd just reduce the benefit accordingly. There are also council tax reductions for those on state pension alone, my mum doesn't have to pay any and she's just on state pension. That's another over 2k there. So you can start to see what kind of pot I'd need to actually make a "profit". Not one I can achieve now. And to be blunt, why would I pay more now just to cover a few years of rent and CT in my retirement?

Yes there is the argument of "well if everyone took that attitude" but I have to think about myself. I think it is part of the reason why there's been a big push into getting people set up with pensions and continuing this narrative of "any is better than none". But people really do need to look at their own personal circumstances. Especially once you hit your 50's, it's time to assess and really look into what you'd be entitled to etc. I see too many people on here of that age panicking about what's going to happen. Do the research, work it out. If private renting, start looking into over 55's/60's housing. There's far less pressure on that than SH in general. But it's basically the same as SH, just for older people.

Of course it's different if you're young and/or well paid. If I had my time over I'd have done things differently. But these threads are for all ages and circumstances.

Mid-30s, earn around £85k, normally contribute 40% plus 5% employer contribution on top, about £125k in the pot.

I only seriously started contributing in the last couple of years. I should have started in my 20s. My DF was asking me about my pension when I started work but didn't really do a great job at explaining why it's important to contribute from an early age. I had £125 in my pension from my shop job when pensions became opt-out, and in 10 years that doubled. Imagine if I'd had £10k from age 24, I'd be in a much better position.