45% of working age people not saving toward a pension at all

I think that possibly people have seen that pension credit (which tops up someone with lower than full state pension) takes you to £3 less than full state pension.
This then brings in a raft of other entitlements - council tax discount being one. I dare say you would indeed be better off without full state pension. So, unless you are able to do a decent private pension also, it seems almost better to not even have full qualifying years for SP?

Its honestly no surprise financial education is lacking awareness of what it will cost to life in the future is not thpught about. As soon as my daughter started her PT job at 15 i got her to set up a jsipp. Not many people know about them but its a way of pension saving early even if she puts £20 pm in. At 67 this could be worth anything between £50k on a 4% growth and £210k on an 8% groth depending on her pots performance a jsipp like a sipp will compound and be given tax relief starting when she 1st starts earning gives her the knowledge that that money is spoken for andshe will only have invested £15300 overall if she then can also do a workplace pension as she gets older then amazing.
Pensions are about starting young as well as maximising what you can afford COL will impact it without doubt but thats because people will wing it and see.
Schools should teach financial awareness, budgeting, saving and investing and pensions in my opinion

Its honestly no surprise financial education is lacking awareness of what it will cost to life in the future is not thpught about. As soon as my daughter started her PT job at 15 i got her to set up a jsipp. Not many people know about them but its a way of pension saving early even if she puts £20 pm in. At 67 this could be worth anything between £50k on a 4% growth and £210k on an 8% groth depending on her pots performance a jsipp like a sipp will compound and be given tax relief starting when she 1st starts earning gives her the knowledge that that money is spoken for andshe will only have invested £15300 overall if she then can also do a workplace pension as she gets older then amazing.
Pensions are about starting young as well as maximising what you can afford COL will impact it without doubt but thats because people will wing it and see.
Schools should teach financial awareness, budgeting, saving and investing and pensions in my opinion

What do you mean? What do you think should happen to those in poverty when they retire?

Some people barely earn enough to pay the bills. How are they meant to save for a pension too?

But what kind of work are they in?
My young adult child has a job so in theory he’s not unemployed… but it’s zero hours contract, despite telling them repeatedly that he wants to work full time, he’s given on average 10 hours a week!
He is looking for another job but so many are zero hours.
It’s a lot cheaper for these employers to employ 4 people on 10 hours per week than 1 on a 40 hpw contract. No need for employer contributions to pensions etc.
But hey the government figures look great…

Why would you think people choosing to only spend what they can afford on kids birthdays/Christmas and budgeting or foregoing holidays abroad are rich????? Quite the opposite! But still have the sense to pay into a pension.

DH is self employed so any we pay into his private pension comes back as a tax rebate. I am on carers allowance and work ~10hrs a week. Still put a little bit into a workplace pension.

I'm not rich. Our household income is under £60k with two full-time workers.
But i think your attitide pretty much sums up the way lifestyles have crept way beyond what they used to be. And what used to be considered a extra - eg a holiday - is now seen as a basic need.
We are constantly told on here that families are spending every penny and struggling to make ends meet, yet when i walk past a nursery in my very working class area, you can't move for SUVs no more than three years old.
Soft play, play cafes, takeaway coffee shops, ice cream parlours, nail bars, beauticians, tanning shops, vape shops, endless hairdressers, dog grooming shops - someone must be using these places, yet they none of them existed 40 years ago.
So every penny may be being spent - but is driving a car far bigger and newer than really needed, getting a dog groomed, a couple of takeaway coffees a week and a soft play session really more important than a pension?

Exactly. Attitudes like that - thinking pension saving is optional - are exactly why auto-enrolment needs to be mandatory with no opt out. Otherwise there are people who will prioritise luxuries over pension saving which is essential, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill.

There will always be a small proportion of people too disabled to work and the state pension should be a safety net for that situation. For everyone who can work pension saving should not be a choice. £150bn and rising per year is going on state pensions and it’s simply not affordable when we’re paying £100bn in debt interest and can’t afford to fund schools and healthcare etc properly. People need to accept being responsible for their own retirement funds.

The PP’s comment to which you responded also shows many people have no grasp of basic maths and compounding, another reason why the opt-out needs to be removed. Pension saving needs to be treated like a tax, in effect, but with everyone saving for their own so that changes in demographics don’t bankrupt the country. Anybody who understands even very basic maths can see that it is a mathematical certainty that the current system is not sustainable, especially the triple lock, but ultimately the UK public will have to accept the state pension beings means-tested.

The country is broke and we can’t afford to continue this largesse to pensioners, far in excess of the tax they have contributed. Over 25% of those in receipt of state pensions are millionaires and a further 25% have incomes higher than the national average full time salary (£39k). For us to be handing out welfare to people in this situation is ridiculous when they have minimal costs and means testing it at this level would cause no poverty to anybody. To be demanding state welfare you have no need of while taxes are sky high and public services is crumbling is absurdly entitled and anti-social and frankly should be ignored. Nearly 70% if pensioners have no housing costs and those that do largely have this paid via benefits on top of the state pensions welfare!

It’s not acceptable for living standards for those of working age, infrastructure, education, healthcare and defence to crumble and a large proportion of children to be living in poverty just because people will kick up a fuss if they don’t get state handouts they don’t require when they are the richest cohort in society by far and over half of them have absolutely no need for state welfare to have a comfortable standard of living, particularly when this situation was foreseen and entirely predictable and they chose not to demand politicians rectified it decades ago when they should have and voted for tax cuts for themselves instead.

Australia anticipated the demographic problem and implemented sensible system decades ago. We should have done the same. We need to do this now; better late than never.

But this is often sensible, provided that you have been fortunate to earn well and prepared to save properly during your working years. We did this last year with our lump sum. At 70, we haven't started drawing down the accumulated pension yet, plus it's still accruing new money from rental income. We have state pensions, and I have a very small one from my last paid employment. We're also the owners of the small business that DH started and still runs, so we have another income on a post-retirement profit share basis. The house can be sold to fund care if necessary.

Our DC is in the process of buying a modest house with our gift plus the inheritances from our mothers, which bypassed us via deeds of variation to their wills. Provided one of us lives another seven years, that part of our estate will be outside IHT.

DC has been a member of our SIPP since the age of two. It has been carefully planned over 30 years. I turn slightly apoplectic when Chancellors re-write the rules, and there's zero prospect of investing in any hare-brained government-approved schemes.

Pension credit is nothing to do with UC - it’s entirely dependent on income below a certain threshold. And not everyone on UC is unemployed.

Some people barely have enough to live on. And require UC to top up their pittance wage. Perhaps employers should be taking more responsibility.

That's why workplace pensions need to be compulsory with no opting out.

I was interested by an article I read a year or so ago, I think it was Martin Lewis. Apparently, there's been a rise in people with private pensions cashing them in early as a lump sum to hand over to their kids to get them on the housing ladder/contribute to uni fees/ whatever is needed, leaving themselves much worse off for their retirement. Naturally, he advised against this.

The increase in people having children at an older age is having an impact on what people do with their pension pots, with more hitting late 50s with teenagers still at home and elderly parents needing care. It's tempting to see that sum of money becoming available as a lifeline for today rather than to keep you tomorrow.

In addition you have people headless-chickening about their children having to pay IHT without thinking about their own needs whilst they are still living.

Well there’s just no incentive to work. How can there be, if people are vociferously arguing that those who don’t work should get exactly the same?

SIPPs have been available in the UK since 1988. How old are you that you’ve had no opportunity over the last 37 years to use one? To have retired in 1988 at say 60 years old you’d have to be 97 by now. In which case you are excused for not having a private pension fund. Otherwise, it’s a lame excuse. And even before SIPPs were established it was still perfectly possible to invest your money post-tax, just as people still do today in addition to having pensions.

I may be wrong but if on UC state pension contributions are still paid? So the expectation that we need to pay into our state pensions for 38 years from wages is false?

If you don't then you get pension credit which comes with lots of extras like contributions to rent, dental care, council tax etc?

Most companies and government sector have an automatic private pension which are taken out of earnings. There is the option to opt out but after advice from elders it really is best to keep paying into it.

This figure does seem incredible, most if not all jobs do jave a pension scheme, NEST for zero hours.

And apparently not save £100 a month for a holiday with your children but put it into your pension pot instead.

Some posters assumed ive saved £100 a month for decades for holidays amd blasted me for wanting to take my kids away. Nope, this is the first year I have been able to put money aside for a holiday.

But yeah, I wont take them on holiday, il put £100 into my pension pot for 12 months instead.

Like honestly wtf?!

Oh and the £25 a month i put into their birthday and christmas funds.....apparently £300 on a birthday/christmas (split) is too much money and that should go into my pension too?!

So no Christmas or birthdays for them?

I love rich people telling poor people how to spend their money 🙄

Its 75%