Should I pause my pension contributions while money is very tight?

Do NOT stop your contributions as if you do the chances are you will never recommence them
The goverment also gives approx 20% of the amount you pay in tax relief

oh dear, if he is abusive or neglectful you need to leave him.

Pay into your pension... money in late 20s early 30s will really add up by the time you reach retirement. plus you'll be missing out on your works contirbution.

Can you not access the funded nursery hours if you wanted to work more?

Before having my daughter I worked full time and paid a decent chunk into the company pension scheme, I paid into it for 9 years prior to leaving.

I worked elsewhere briefly, I didn’t transfer my pension as I wasn’t there for long before leaving due to ill health (M.S).

I’m nearly 60 and have remembered about my old company pension. I’m looking at receiving approximately £120 a week. Not a fortune I know but I’m so glad I didn’t leave the scheme, I nearly did as in the early 90’s mortgage interest rates reached nearly 15% and money was so tight. Remember that your company will also be paying into it as well if it’s a company scheme.

So when you work your dh is off?

What's your timeline for paying the personal loans off?
Will you be able to transfer your balance to another credit card? If not, you'll struggle in January.

If your credit card interest rate was 24.9%
And your monthly repayments were £190, it would take 40 years to pay back and would cost you £92,550 in total with interest included. If you're paying less for your repayment as repayment term is longer, then you could be looking at more like £150000 -£200000 or more in total repayment for your £9000 debt.

If you can overpay your £9000 credit card debt by £150/month, you would only pay £13260 repayment including interest.

Priority (if you can't balance transfer) is credit card repayment asap. If you can balance transfer, it buys you time but you'll need to be overpaying it as much as you can so you're not trapped in a debt spiral.

Once you've paid off credit card, I'd continue pension as when you factor in employer top-up and government top-up, your returns on pension will be higher than the money saved by overpaying personal loans.

Have a look at rebel finance school. Totally ignore all their advice on investing (it's really risky and they don't appreciate the risks of everyone buying index funds) but their talks through debt etc. are quite helpful.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/minimum-repayments-credit-card/

Have a look at this link to figure out what your credit card debt will cost you as a total number (ignore minimum payment as that's designed to keep you in debt and paying interest as long as possible).

Genuine question OP, how does a young person on (presumably?) a fairly low income get £42k in debt? Who is lending that? It's scary.

The advice above to talk to a debt charity or CAB is good. They can help you work out how best to get it paid off without stopping the pension payment.

PP's advice to compare the rate on the debt to the likely return on your pension is incorrect given your minimum payment obligations- these will prevent this sort of compounding. CC companies aren't legally allowed to let this kind of debt compound like that. You should keep the pension payment going if you possibly can.

Plucking numbers out of thin air, but 37.5 hours at NMW is £24,785. After a 3% pension contribution, your net take home is £1,735.

Google gives an average childcare cost, after working parent entitlements, of £140 per week. Double this as two kids, £280 per week, or £1,213 per month.

I appreciate it’s not masses, but that leaves you with c£500 per month. Obvious this then needs to fund a car which might not leave much, but longer-term you can hope to leverage your job experience to get into a role which isn’t NMW.

You are in a rubbish situation and I feel for you OP. If you don’t want to put your children in full time childcare and start to forge a path to a career that pays more than NMW, then it’s literally a matter of time to wait out until both are in school and costs go down.

It would be a massive investment for your future though. The childcare years are short in a lifetime, the damage done to your career will last a long time.

I know it seems unimaginably far away now, but one day you having a better pension will help your dc, because they'll need to spend less money to support you, they won't have to worry about you as much.

It comes around so much faster than you think, and small amounts of money paid in regularly at this age are worth far more to you in the long run than larger amounts paid in later, because of the compound growth and employer contributions.

If you don't think the relationship will survive it's essential that you resurrect your career, even if most of the money goes on childcare.

If you don’t think the relationship will last that’s even more reason to go full time, get your own car etc. full time job will also mean bigger pension contributions for your long term savings

If you stop, then whenever you restart you'll need to find twice as much for some period of time, to make up for the time you weren't paying in. More like several times as much if you want to make up for the missed employer contributions too. You might end up trying to find more than £100 a month to go into your pension later, and by then you'll be taking it not from a soft play budget but perhaps the one for football club or dance classes.

Also, don't rule out working more even if in the short term you don't actually make a profit from it. If it makes you more employable once your dc is at school then it could still pay for itself in the long run.

I would say keep going. I'm just about to start a new part time job after being somewhere else for 2 years, though its 3-4 days per week at the new one. I was considering opting out with my new employer but, in my previous job with employer contributions I accrued over £6,000 in pension on quite low hours so I will join the new pension scheme. I intend to draw out the tax free part - possibly more - of all my combined pensions when I'm 57 (or whatever the next new age is by then....I'm only 6 years off atm) to clear any outstanding debt. So I see it as more of a way of saving than waiting for the small monthly amounts I might get if/when I can ever retire or manage to live long enough!