Is this OK for retirement?

I agree - pension threads always make me feel like l am going to be that pensioner who has to choose between eating and heating

Run yoir number as a singlr person through this calculator:
www.guiide.co.uk/

The thing with money is that it is all relative: There are those that shop in Waitrose and complain about not having enough money, and those that manage in Lidl & Aldi on a fraction of the amount.

I assume the State Pension of £12K means that it is possible to survive on it, otherwise the streets would be littered with dead pensioners.

I guess I'm going to be one of those staying at home and doing gardening instead of jetting off to an exclusive spa in Bali twice a year.

My partner and I are a few years younger than you and we're aiming for 1m each (not including LISAs) plus a rental property.

I don't rely on the government to pay out anything though, so we are trying to put money aside in different ways too. Certainly wouldn't expect the state pension will exist when we retire.

If you've not been in the UK for a chunk of time, have you checked what state pension you are likely to get? It might be worth looking into buying back years, especially if you have any partial years which might be able to be bought relatively cheaply. The window for back dating this is due to reduce in the next few weeks so I would look quickly.

I get it's a balance but I guess you have to ask what lifestyle compromises now would allow you to make less compromises in retirement. I get it's a challenge that most won't be able to manage, especially if they started later in life. My pension allows me to run predictions on what difference various contributions would make to my pot on retirement and likely annual pension. I've recently been made redundant so I've been looking at what difference continuing to make a small contribution to my pension would do in the long term. I'm looking at paying in around £100 a month about 20% of what was being paid in when I was working (mine and my employers contribution combined). It would make quite a difference to the amount I'd get at the end but it's not going to make a huge difference to our lifestyle now.

A pension pot of almost £60k is nothing. Not enough to live on at all.

It’s easy, when you are young, to think you are going to breeze through to retirement age, but shit happens. I didn’t envisage being diagnosed with breast cancer at 57 or that my DH would have a stroke 2 months after I completed treatment. It would have been a total disaster for us if we hadn’t planned to retire in our late 50s so both events meant that we could give up work without financial loss.
I have just lost a friend ( 58) she had a brain haemorrhage out of the blue and died within 24hrs. My younger sister died last year from pancreatic cancer aged 56. It’s easy to feel invincible in your 30s and 40s but having lost both parents before they were retirement age we chose to aim for early retirement, just in case.

For reference, I recently retired at 59 with a pension pot equivalent to £700k. This gives me a pension of around £40k pa. I have paid NI ( self employed) so will receive state pension at 67. I’m still working one day a week and DH is drawing down his private pension until he reaches state pension.
Once we are both over 67 we will have an annual income of around £60-70k.

For this though I have been paying into a pension for 35 yrs at a % averaging 10% of my superannuable income, which at times was over £400 a month. I am still contributing to a small private pension while I’m working for tax purposes.

My advice would be to speak to a good financial adviser in order to get the most for your money.
We still have a DS at uni which is why I’m still working, once he has completed his studies then I will retire fully. We know we can manage on our current income, the earned part is purely to support DS. We also have a healthy amount in savings which we have been using to replace household appliances and generally upgrading the house. The aim is to reduce our energy consumption and we have nearly halved our energy bills. The last project is to board out and further insulate the loft.

Regardless of the country’s economic future we have given ourselves a huge comfort zone. It may have been at the cost of some luxuries we could have enjoyed in the past but I am now happy that we were cautious. Both of us have had major health problems so early retirement has been a blessing. I’m glad we didn’t stick our heads in the sand and hope for the b st.

This is so true.

I thought I was doing ok - or at least doing my best in my own circumstances - but recently some of the threads on MN about finances and retirement have made me feel really depressed. Lots of really smug posts from people who will be retiring at 50 with ££££. Not very helpful to anyone.

Nobody here knows if that will be enough or not. Half the response on here will say they will be on the breadline and feeling the pinch with their £2m property empire funding retirement and the other half will be people who rent, are approaching retirement and have about £20k in their pot.

What lifestyle do you have/want? That will determine what income you need from retirement.
It my be worth getting some advice on what to aim for and what you need to do to get there.
You've got time, it might helpful to look at contributions as a percentage of income to judge if it's enough. The rough rule of thumb is you need to contribute half your age when you start paying in - i.e. if you start at 30 total contribution, including employer would be 15% of income.

Rule of thumb is around £250k of capital for a £10k annuity. You need to decide what sort of retirement you want and work back from there to what level of saving you need to be doing now to achieve that

Current figures suggest that a pension pot of that size would give an annuity of £12K - £13K (presumably split between you?). So at 67 (if the pension age stays the same) your dh would get about £6K per annum, plus his state pension. Then when you retire your total pension payouts would be around £36/37/38K between you. And you would have to pay a small amount of tax.

Can you live, day-to-day on that amount, covering all bills and routine costs (car, food, insurance, council tax etc). What about personal spend? A haircut, clothes, Christmas and birthdays?

You might also have some capital from downsizing, which would presumably pay for luxuries and unplanned expenses, such as holidays, eating out, major repairs. If you did have £300K of released capital, wise investment might give you about £10K+ per annum without eating into the capital sum.

That's all at today's figures. No-one can predict how that might change.

Fort some couples £36K per annum for all routine expenses, plus £10K per annum for luxuries would seem like a fortune. For other couples it would require major cutbacks. Only you can know how that fits with your expectations and habits.

Why would you need a fully remote job if you want to live in London?

What is your bidget for buying in London? How big a mortgage would yoi need? Where do you plan to downsize to?

I would suggest running some actual figures.

Also if you have both only worked in the UK for 12 years, check you will have paid enough NI to get a state pension.

So you are relying on moving to London, buying a house in London and then selling it when you are 68 to add to your pot? Feels risky in your mid 40s.