To think I am fucked for retirement?

Are you in a union? Most unions will offer free pension advice. Worth looking at. I wish I had done it as I made a couple of rookie errors which have cost me.

Honestly, get some proper financial advice. Pensions are complicated and I am hopeless with this stuff as well. A (very canny) friend recommended the guy I now use. He didn't charge anything directly but takes a management fee from the fund(s) he sets up.
I had money in a pot that was losing value (which is why I contacted him in the first place), but he explained the reasons and suggested a better product with the same company. He made all the arrangements and the investment started going up immediately.
It was well worth it for peace of mind. And do it now, while you're still young.

Depends where you live

*op, I know all this terminology can seem really confusing, but this is where Google is your friend!!

Btw, you've done great at your mortgage overpayments!

Defined benefit pension: you get a certain amount each month upon retirement.

Defined contribution: you pay what you like into your pension, but don't know how much you'll actually get monthly when you retire.

What you need to do:

Find out who your old pensions are with. You could then consider consolidating them.

'online banking says pot value is £2400'

Do you mean on the pension providers website, or your own personal online banking??

What's your job? That will give a clue as to the type of pension you are likely to have (defined benefit or defined contribution).

I'd have thought £2400 is likely to be a projection of an annual pension from a defined benefit pension (with no further contributions and not taking into account inflation). If so, multiply this by 20 to obtain an estimate of the equivalent 'pension pot', which would be £48,000.

Definitely trace your previous workplace pensions - the amount you're saying is way too low for that to be 8 years' worth.

You can consolidate your pensions into one pot, which you will maybe find easier to look after and might reduce fees as well.

And learn more about your pension so you can see what the rate of return there is.

Look up your NI contributions and predicted state pension on the gov.uk website - you might want to add additional years to that if you don't have enough.

Then look at interest rates on ISAs (cash, or stocks and shares) vs your mortgage payments, and see which is most beneficial - saving in a tax free way or overpaying the mortgage. ISAs mean you can access the cash when you need it, so might be an idea rather than adding to pension. But talk to a financial adviser, and also make sure that you're getting the maximum pension contribution from your employer as well, as that's essentially free money.

If you already have a LISA they are good for getting a 25% govt bonus on up to £4k/yr, but not available to open a new one if you're over 40, so no good of you don't already have one.

• Sorry, not fill pension tracing, but will give you contact details for your pension providers for previous jobs

Gov.uk have a free pension tracing service..

www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details

If you’ve had 3 jobs and paid into a pension with each one, then you’ve got at least 3 pots. They could all be with different providers! Most companies automatically change your work pension to a private pension when you leave and send you some info but it can be difficult to track down. A fee will be charged on each one.
I ended up getting a financial advisor to track them all down and consolidate them into 1 private pot so I only pay one lot of fees whilst contributing to my workplace pension. The last time a changed jobs I made sure I transferred the old workplace pot to the new workplace scheme, so I’ve still only got 1x private pension and 1x workplace pension to manage. It’s a PITA but you’ll feel much better once it’s sorted

So this particular amount (£2400) is the amount that has built up in your current employment.

as you can see it in your banking app I am assuming this is what is known as a defined contribution pension and you do not work for the NHS or council for example as they offer what is called a defined benefit pension.

You need to find out how much built up whilst you were working for your precious employers and consider bringing them together or at least knowing what pensions they are so you can keep an eye on performance.

Martin MSE has good information and a helpful forum if you need some guidance.

You are only 42 so have a long time to build a nice pension - no need to stress - you just need to do a bit of homework 🙂

Take a deep breath, all will be well!

You are probably in a good position for your age and stage. At 42 you have a good 20 working years ahead and by the time you retire

• you will have had many more years to stash £ into your pension
• you will own your property outright, and have had no mortgage payments for many years
• you will qualify for a full state pension which is likely to be something not nothing, and in today's money is £1000/month

I would say

• trace those pensions so you know where you are and what you have
• focus on rainy day savings, then mortgage, then pension savings

Defined Benefit is a final salary pension, quite rare now unless you work in some public sector areas. Defined Contribution is a workplace scheme where you pay in a percentage of your salary and your employer contributes too. This builds up a pot of money for retirement and you can choose whether to buy an annuity, which pays out until you die or use the pot of money to draw down from. If you've moved job several times, you'll either have several different pots of money or if a Defined Benefit scheme and less than 2 years the company might refund the contributions to you. The best thing is to see if you have any paperwork or emails from pension providers.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/discount-pensions/

I suggest you start here, this is a brilliant guide to start learning about pensions. Don't panic, you have time to sort this out, I wish I had had these thoughts at 42!

Why on nothing? You get state pension of £200+ a week. That's enough to pay your bills on a mortgage-free house. Then you add your work pension ON TOP of your state pension.

It's a good start OP.

As a rule of thumb I estimate I would get 4-5% of my total pension value per year.

So for every 100k in your pension you might get approx 4-5k a year.

Keep going, and don't panic.

You can add to this the government pension of 12, 750/year, after 67. So you would be on 15k plus now.

This might help with tracing:

https://www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details

Get a pension advisor once you've traced and talk about the possibility or viability of moving it all to one pot.

I would seriously consider putting more in your pension and overpaying your mortgage less. But I'm not a financial advisor and a good one of them, might be a good bet also.

Plenty of help if you find a good independent advisor.

What's the £2400 figure?

If you've paid in 12 months a year for 9 years that's nearly 120 months.

I'm pretty sure you've paid more than £20 a month into your pension?! (That's if they are saying that's the total you've paid in?!)

It's difficult because the my predict yearly sum out over so many years.

So it never seems as much as you expect.

But usually there's a lump sum and then a monthly or annual amount to be paid?

I'm guessing you also have enough NI credits for state pension too?

If you think you'd have paid off your mortgage in 6 years you can have a look at private pensions with that "freed money". I'd look at paying less and up your current rainy day savings too if you can.

I am 40 and work for the NHS so my pension terms are pretty good. Even then I only increase my pension annuity by about 800 in a tax year. I have 28 years to go so that makes the total pot worth about 25k plus state pension. I am hoping it will increase with the rate of inflation...
If your employer contributes minimally, it sounds as though you still should be adding about £500 annually so that's 17k plus state pension. Not a huge amount but not peanuts either. That's probably well over 2k before tax.

I am assuming that is the amount per year, without even looking at growth the pot should be at least 25k.

Do you have a defined benefit or a defined contribution pension?

2400 is how much you’ll get every year, right? It’s expensive to save to get income! I think they expect people to claim for 20 years and you need a LOT put by to get a income for that long