To think I am fucked for retirement?

We're all f**ked under this Government!
Not just pensioners.

In years ahead try remember, why you naively voted them in.

I’m in a workplace NEST pension

I’ve been paying in for 11.5 years. I pay 4% and my employer contributes 3%. And 1% tax relief.

When I started it my salary was around £22k. It’s now at £42k. (And around 11 years of it has been from the same company as I’ve been there for almost 11 years now)

My current pension pot value is currently worth over £20k.

So, purely going off what mine is saying and comparing it to your contributions etc, yours does sound very low considering what % you’ve been paying in and for how long?

Although, I’m not very good at understanding pensions either! So i could be completely wrong in my assumptions!

I checked my pension a few months ago after 20 years in service. It was really low, I panicked and rang and was told the figure I can see is what it’s worth today not what it will be when I retire.

So 8% of £35k is £2800 something does not add up as that would be one years contribution. Does the 8% include the employer’s contribution?? You should have a lot more in the pot than that. Unless the £2400 is your income at pension age? With pensions the longer you pay in for the better so if you can afford to make AVC’s additional voluntary contributions that would really help. Don’t panic

There are many services to trace pensions. Google them.

If you have three pensions, you need to find out how much was paid into each pot and how much each will pay out. Some investors are shockingly poor.

That said, at least you are spreading your risk.

You should be entitled to a state pension in addition - 35 years on NI gets you a full pension of around £12k.

This seems a good time to sit down with a pensions adviser and get a full review. You have 25 years to increase it. The earlier payments are made the more they are likely to be worth when you come to pensionable age.

Good luck, it is a real mare’s nest to sort out.

9 years paying in at 8% on a salary of £35k is around £25k so I think somethings up here. Either you're misunderstanding the information as others have said or something is seriously wrong. Pension pots fell with the Liz Truss fiasco but mine at least has almost fully recovered now. Check it out and if necessary speak to an independent financial adviser. He/she should also be able to advise whether its better to overpay the mortgage (well done btw!) or put the money into your pension.

I'd suggest tracing your lost pensions- you can use the gov.uk website for that.
Pensionwise website is useful for understanding how pensions work
You have time to increase your pension pot.
Remember once you retire your outgoings will be less as no mortgage to pay and no kids to support.
You could also consider getting a lodger for some extra income

I have committed the cardinal sin of not reading the thread as I am in a bit of a rush but as others have said I am fairly sure this cannot be correct. There is a government website that enables you to trace pensions in your name if you google it. It sounds like something is missing.

Please, get some proper advice. Your union or pension scheme might have someone you can contact. You need to know where to focus. Beware. Wou need to pay NI contributions until retirement age or your state pension won’t be at its max.

Tbh you’re better off with nothing, you’ll get everything. My friend on all the benefits is far better off than me with three company pensions

You're worrying unduly.
You're 42. You've got another 20 odd years of work ahead of you. Unless you were wanting to retire at 50 in which case yes you would be skint.
Try making Additional Voluntary Contributions. It'll be worth it in the end. You won't qualify for your State pension till you're 68 at least so unless you're going to inherit anything you'll have to keep working.
Maybe you'll meet someone.
Stop panicking.

8% of £30K is £2400 - 8% of £35K is 2,800 - if there wasn't any interest an your salary stayed the same then over 9 years you should have at least £25,200 in your pot!
So, have a chat with your IFA (Independent Financial Advisor) or whomever the Pension plan is with - but whatever, £2400 cannot be the sum total of you pot unless your pension has been embezzled!

If you have any suspicions then you should contact the Pensions Regulator and f you don't have an IFA then contact the Pensions Advisory Service (its free)

I'm rubbish at pensions too but isn't that figure if you took it now? That's what happens when I look at mine. Its hard to forecast what you'll get in 20 years.
Contrary to others, I would continue to pay-off your mortgage. To be clear of such a burden in 6 years would be amazing. Then thr amount you would ve paying off you can save. You'll have options. You can downsize and keep some equity. Fyi my pension had another 19 years left and I'm 45!! You're doing fine.

So you have worked at 3 different companies in the last 9 years. Your current employer you have built up about £2k a year. A previous employer you have about £900 a year. What about the 3rd employer? So currently you have nearly £3k a year pension. They are separate pensions and aren't all added to each other. So you have to keep track of each one you have.

You still have 25 years to contribute to build your pension. If your current company you have just over £2k built in 3 years, that's pretty good. In 25 years time your pension will be better.

If you were 62 with a pension of 2k, then yes be worried, but at 42 you have time.

Also don't forget, you will get state pension on top of your private pensions. Assuming it's still around!

That's not what your pension is worth. Where did you get that figure from?

That's likely to be the annual annuity payment that you are projected to get based on the value of your pension pot. So keep paying in and it will increase. When you retire you don't need to transfer your pot into an annuity, you can just draw down from it like its savings.

Keep paying off your mortgage - clear your debts first. When you are mortgage free then consider increasing your pension contributions. Don't forget you will also get a State Pension (hopefully). You're on course to have a reasonably comfortable retirement.

Do you have documents from your time at each company? You e probably got 3 pension pots and need to combine them.

Isnt there a tiny element of compounding due to dividend returns being reinvested?

@VanGoghsDog

You're getting mired in semantics. Most of us know that investment returns are not "interest" per se but in trying to explain to a beginner that gains compound as the years go on, it's a shortcut to use the simpler term.

My point was that generally money invested in a pension while it goes up and down generally outperforms a savings account so seeing what that type of monthly investment would earn in an interest paying account does give a reasonable indication of what her pension pot might me. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that over 25 years or more she would have been better off with it in an interest paying account,

None of that changes what I said.

while strictly speaking pensions are not sitting in a fixed interest savings account.

Not "strictly speaking", they are NOT. You can put some of your pension in cash if you want to, but it's pretty unusual these days (used to be more of a thing when people bought annuities, to ensure less possibility of losses near to retirement).

It annoys me when people talk about pensions, which tend to be invested in markets be that equities, bonds etc, but then go on about "interest" and compounding. Neither of these things apply. As I have shown with just one of my funds (which is actually in my ISA, not my pension, but the point is the same) - it went up loads in 2020 (unexpectedly, everything else was going down), then went down again. It's still up overall, 4.5 years since purchase, but there was no "compounding" from that original 130% increase. It simply doesn't apply.

We are all aware that pension funds can lose money. We can't pretend it's all nice and cozy with annual 5% increases compounding year on year, it's just disingenuous to frame it that way.

Unless you think it's better to treat people like idiots, like the pension industry used to!

Those things are true, I never said they weren't. But they reinforce my point that "compound interest" isn't a factor in pensions and it's misleading to suggest that is how they work.

@VanGoghsDog while strictly speaking pensions are not sitting in a fixed interest savings account. They are invested in the stock market etc , which long term operates as an annual return of above 5% of course there are yearly fluctuations but over the 20+ years to OP retires it will generally out perform having it in an bank savings account and so the calculator does help. Give a rough approximate value obviously OP needs to get full figures from her provider

Market investment can be volatile in the short term but the long range trajectory is upward and for the purposes of discussing compounding and the time value of money the semantics are irrelevant.

No one in their right mind is going to put pension monies in an interest bearing savings account at age 40.

The point is that wise investments grow significantly over time. If not we'd still be living in caves trading animal skins.

It's not the same thing as interest at all and it's really misleading to talk about pensions like that.

As I'm sure you know, your investment can go up (for example) 50% one year, then down 75% the next year. Compounding has zero relevance here.

I have an investment that went up 130% during Covid (was purchased in Feb 2020), it's now "only" up about 40%. Where is my compound interest please, where do I apply for it?

Pension pots invested in the stock or bond markets earn investment returns. Money in interest-bearing accounts earn interest. The word "interest" is used as convenience in these demonstrative examples but it's the same thing.

If they achieve an average 5% return on investment per annum it's the same thing.

OP, you need to stop obsessing over what is shown on your financial services dashboard. It's just a snapshot. It means that if a person retired today with what is in your pot, they would get an annual income of X. It doesn't mean that is what you actually will get 20, 25 or 30 years from now. It's bells and whistles on their website. You aren't retiring today so ignore those numbers.

As we have tried to tell you, your workplace pension pots will grow over the years, and they will not only grow by the amounts you contribute, but by the returns they achieve in the markets.

Get a reputable financial advisor ASAP. They will explain this to you. They will tell you about the investing options. Generally the younger you are, the more aggressive the options you should choose. As you near old age, your money will need to be moved to more stable investment choices that don't fluctuate in value as the stock markets move.

The advisor also will tell you, based on the interest rate of your mortgage vs the average annual returns in the stock market, whether it makes more sense to prepay your mortgage or increase your contributions to your workplace pension. They also will tell you of the tax relief you might achieve by increasing pension contributions, which will make your income go further.

None of this is rocket science. It is nothing to be frightened of.

Phone the HR departments of the entities you used to work for. Tell them you are gathering information for an upcoming meeting with a personal financial advisor and that you need to know your pension status. They get these inquiries all the time and will direct you to the internal or external pension manager. Who in turn should be able to provide you with the account information.

You really need to get on top of this. Money invested today is worth a lot more in the long run than money invested 1, 5 or 10 years from now.