Who’s going to pay our pensions in 20-30years if the UK keeps its birth rate low and also restricts immigration?

They need to tackle the unemployment issues. I’ve got absolutely no problem with people who are so disabled that they can’t work. However, most disabled people can work. Some just choose not to and take handouts. It actually makes me sick to the stomach to fund a lifestyle like that when I’m out working everyday.

Yep fair enough, the average compound return of the MSCI World Index (a benchmark global equity index), over the last 40 years when measured in £ has been just over 7% per annum. Obviously that's nominal and not taking inflation into account, but you need to take inflation into account when saving in cash too (which often results in near zero, or even negative, real returns). So maybe I was being a little optimistic, but not much and not nearly enough to change the analysis.

I don't really understand the bit about pensions not being invested in high risk/high return assets - with a modern DC pension you've usually got a decent choice of how to invest and you can go for higher risk/reward funds...all of mine is in global equity trackers, it's a bog standard approach.

And I totally agree about markets usually bouncing back quickly; since I started investing we've had the global financial crisis, the Euro area debt crisis, Brexit, covid, various wars etc. All of which knocked markets, and all of which are now a blip in the rear view mirror.

I may have this wrong, but don’t brown people also grow old and retire?

Not sure about 8% as an average but there is no doubt, if you have 10 plus years, SM can be a great investment.

Pensions however, are unlikely to be investing in the Higher risk, Higher returns markets.

Also worth remembering that the 2 most recent crashes, GFC, Covid, markets bounced back higher within a year or two than pre crash.

That would mean I couldn't retire until I was eighty, from my very manual job, as I didn't start full time work until all my children were at school. I was awarded NI credits from receiving child benefit though, so those years count towards my pension.
Not everyone works continuously from age 18 until retirement without a break, whether that's unemployment, travel, raising children, studying, going part time etc

I would actually support a variable State pension age - say 45 to 50 years after someone starts full-time work. That would mean someone in a manual job who started their apprenticeship at 16 could get a State pension at 61 to 66, and someone who went to university and didn’t start work until 25 would get it at 70 - 75.

It's not so much the overall number of people when it comes to paying for pensions but the age profile. As you can see from the image (which I took from here: commonslibrary.parliament.uk/the-uks-changing-population/) the proportion of retired people is increasing massively.

We have a conundrum. We need immigrants to come and work in our care homes and hospitals and pay our pensions, oh and pick our fruit, but we don't have endless space. Maybe the answer is we all need to learn to live in much smaller homes.

But if your private pension is invested in the stock market what happens if there is a crash/ Liz Truss situation neat the time you plan to retire? Would you lose a lot of your pension?

This is the sort of thing that people really need to get past if they are going to build a decent pension pot on a normal wage.

Take a simple example (ignoring inflation and tax complications, but the point stands): if you save £200 per month for 40 years and invest it in the stock market to generate an average return of 8% (by no means an unreasonable assumption), you'll have just over £700k. But wait! What if there's a massive crash just before you retire and half that value is wiped out? You'd only have £350k, so better to stay in cash and avoid that risk, right?

Well, if you saved the same £200 per month for 40 years in cash and earned 4% (again not an unreasonable assumption), you'd have...about £240k. So still way behind where you'd be if you invested in equities but been really unlucky. As an aside what you'd actually do in practice in the market crash scenario is either gradually transfer to safer investments in the run-up to retirement (so granted you'd would quite get to the £700k), or you'd just remain invested and in time claw back some of your losses.

The point is, people often have the risks and rewards of equity investing hugely out of kilter - they'll focus straight on the 'massive crash' bit while ignoring all the other years that provide much better returns than cash.

I did neither. I did office work from 17 and paid for my own professional qualifications, which i did in evening school and by correspondence.

Are you just thinking its the years of work type of work that matter more for this idea? (Im not trying to be confrontational, just curious)

Pension age is already 67 for a lot of middle aged workers

Many are inputting into a private pension on top of workplace to retire closer to 60 than 70.

People are just going to either fund it themselves, or live on job seekers until state pension. Or find, stay in employment.

Just as uni has to now be personally funded, an earlier retirement will need to be.

This is why they are tightening PIP and sick allowances, to stop people thinking “I’ll go on sick until state pension age” - they know people will game the system. So tighten those rules first, then change the pension age again.

I would actually support a variable State pension age - say 45 to 50 years after someone starts full-time work. That would mean someone in a manual job who started their apprenticeship at 16 could get a State pension at 61 to 66, and someone who went to university and didn’t start work until 25 would get it at 70 - 75.

People in professional jobs should continue working until they drop dead or become too mentally incapacitated to do their jobs.

People in manual work should retire at 65 or when their bodies start to fail if that's sooner.

You can't have a retirement age that's a decade past the age at which most people start to find manual work unmanageable.

People in professional jobs should continue working until they drop dead or become too mentally incapacitated to do their jobs.

People in manual work should retire at 65 or when their bodies start to fail if that's sooner.

You can't have a retirement age that's a decade past the age at which most people start to find manual work unmanageable.

They need to make it easier for youngsters to pay into a pension as soon as they have a job. My teen has finished college and will have a year off to work. He hasn't been auto enrolled into his work pension so we have to sort that out. He could have been paying little bits into a pension since his first Xmas job at 17. He's already maxed out this years LISA.

I love the fact that people would rather never be able to retire than have more brown people immigrate to the UK.

Racism is expensive.

It's why theyre pushing private pensions so hard. They want to stop the pyramid scheme that is state pensions. I think eventually they will end state pensions and youll just get a form of UC to top up your private pension if you're below the poverty line

I think a lot of us are discussing how much we might need if the state pension reduces in value or is means tested or is raised to 75 or removed entirely, rather than what we need if the state pension continues roughly in its current form.

A lot of the pension advice when I started working 30 years ago was still based on your private pension being in addition to the state pension which is why its hard to remove. People planned accordingly. There wasnt auto enrolment, lots of lower earners weren't even offered access to company schemes etc.

I guess people are thinking of saying to an 18 year old plan as if you need to fund the entire lot yourself.

Imagine your scenario without 2 state pension.

Yes the big issue is housing.

It needs to become affordable once more at x3 the average salary as opposed to x10.
The government needs to invest in social housing which cannot be sold off, rented to third parties, or passed down to a child/relative.
It could also build truly affordable, not for profit modular starter homes with things like solar panels for cooling as well as heating and be well insulated so minimum energy costs. Recycled grey water etc. These would be sold based on rises in inflation only (not speculative market rent so they always remained affordable).

There should be a rent cap for private rentals.

All of this would reduce the massive housing bill that the government is paying to private landlords. It would also free up more money for people to spend and do grow the economy. Perhaps people would be able to think about having a child/ more children.

There could also be incentives for elderly people to move out of larger homes into smaller properties (more of these need to be built as there is a lack of suitable single level housing at the moment). Apartments would work as they have lift access. They could have communal/ courtyard gardens with plenty of seating.