To ask what pension plans you have in place

[Toystory4]

I have around £40k in a pension pot and save around £100 per month and the company pays similar I am 48.

I went to see the company's pension adviser and he said I really need to be paying a lot more if I want a decent income in retirement. He worked out the figures and said somewhere in the region of £600 extra a month would get me back on track and help me have the pension I want in retirement. I was shocked that it would take this much and that my own savings were on track to give me as little as £80-100 a week in retirement.

Anyone else in the same boat and worried about it? I am single so have to look after myself.

Local Government Pension Scheme for me. Used their calculator and worked out that, by the time I retire, I should get around £60k in a lump sum, plus a £20k a year income. The mortgage will be paid by that point as well, all being well.

DH is private sector with no pension, so I'll be paying for two of us with that I should imagine.

i have a public sector occupational pension
gold plated it ain't - I think at the moment my forecast is that it will pay about 13k PA, plus a lump sum or 50-60k when I'm 68.

DH is in a similar position. So we'll have a joint income of about £25k, no mortgage and £100k cash. Not great, but adequate I guess.

I have a public sector pension which people will say is unfair/too good blah blah. In fact I've been paying in 300 a month since I started work at age 23. Most recent forecast if I continue to 65 is about 17,000 a year

Hmm. This is reminding me that I need to figure out how much I can boost my pension contributions at work, currently around £50/month.

Problem is, DP will have a crap pension (never paid in much, started late as 20s spent in low paid work of the sort that never used to do a pension). So will my siblings (always on temp work/low paid). So expecting to need to help out. Though would rather be skint and still have them around, obviously.

So if you don't come from money, and expect to inherit precisely FA, you're a bit screwed.

I don't come from money and won't inherit anything- that's why I knew I had to make provision for retirement from as early an age as possible. Not saying it isn't difficult though.

Naive question - are the sums people are talking about £xx lump sums, and £xx per year , then taxed? Or are they what you get in your pocket.

With increasing numbers of people requiring care as they age I'd imagine the chances of inheriting if your parents do own property are diminishing

I have a friend who had counted on inheriting her fathers house...until he took out an equity release scheme

Ive also a public sector Pension that ive been paying into since i was 22.

I will be joining a teachers pension scheme as soon as I qualify and get a job in September 2017

I will be 39

I have a company pension from my last employer that will be worth £1800 a year

My mortgage won't be paid off until i'm 60 and it's highly likely that my oldest dd wont live independently as an adult (ASD) so I won't be able to save much money towards retirement

So basically i'm screwed

You can access any defined contribution pots from age 55 now

ThroughThickAndThin - the amounts people are talking about are mostly annual amounts of pension income. This income will be taxed. However, I don't think you pay national insurance on pension income (and you won't be making pension contributions of course), so the amount you get in your pockets will be slightly higher than for the equivalent salary.

I have hardly any pension. Didn't work for nearly many years,due to children, aging parents, exh travelling for work. So now I have the pleasure of full-time work until kids older then downsizing and part time work until I drop. I have the opportunity to retrain - potential to earn more with reducing outgoings.

It could be worse.

I've been duly paying into work pensions since I was about 24 (am now 38) but recently realised that current projections give me something like £7k a year. DH no better. We are fortunate that we have some investment in property as well, but it's definitely on my list of new year's resolutions to figure this all out, and almost certainly increase contributions. We might have some inheritance too, but can't count on that, particularly if parents need care, and anyway, I hope my parents live until they're 100!

I think a lot of people are in for a shock.

Thanks Oubliette, I thought that was the case (but hoping I was wrong!)'some of the sums seem so small when you consider the amount with tax taken off.

I already receive one pension, NHS - paid out because of permanent disability.

My work pension is NEST and I pay an extra £10 in to that - so it will be worth about £0,

I have enough NI contributions for a full SP2 - but that's all changing and I have about £3k in a SIPP.

Nothing. I often worry about this, but then I think if I did have a decent pension I probably wouldn't get any help off the state once I reach retirement age. I'd rather start sticking my spare cash under the mattress to be honest, rather than put it in a pension.

That being said, I do own a small property outright, and my mortgage on my house will be paid off in 10/12 years. I'm 30.

I've been paying into nhs pension for 2 years.... not a clue how much I'll get out of it in the end but since I will be working for at least the next 35 years I'm not Shitting myself too much.

I am mid 30's and have 15% of my salary going in to a company pension (10% employer, 5% my contribution) but I'm planning to increase it this year - it is a very tax efficient way of saving apart from anything else.

I am working on the assumption that there will be no state pension by the time I reach pension age, and probably not a welfare system to speak of the way this government is going.

DH is self-employed and is trying to invest now to give him an income when he retires as he doesn't have a pension - between my regular pension income & what we can do from DH's side, and no mortgage by then, we should be ok and intend to retire relatively early (DH has health problems so won't be able to do much physical work much past 40), although we will continue to work within whatever investments we are able to sort.

I've got about ten years in the Civil Service pension scheme. I can't say how much it will pay me when I retire without looking at the paperwork - probably not a massive amount because I wasn't on a high salary when I was there. I changed jobs four years ago, and went three years without paying into a pension. My company started a pension scheme about a year ago into which I am now contributing. I'm 39 btw. A lot of my peers of a similar age seem to have no pension set up at all.

My DH started off tiny pensions for both our DDs when they were born to get them started! Not sure how this works though.

Our own pension provision is not spectacular. It takes a ginormous pension pot to get an income of anywhere near say £20k a year.

Pensions are a bit stuffed in this country, especially after Osbourne wrecked the annuities industry. It was badly flawed, but driving a coach and horses through it by allowing people to draw down chunks of their pension when aged just 55 was not the answer.

I earn a lot but after 1200 mortgage, 1300 childcare,9% student loan I can barely cover bills let alone increase pension contribution (5%, employer matches)
Really feel like the squeezed generation- pay for education at high level, housing is at high level and thur to pay for somewhere to live childcare is then high too.

Private sector pensions have changed so much. When I started looking after my mum's affairs after she developed dementia, I was amazed to discover that she was being paid a monthly widows pension from a British chemical manufacturer of £800 per month, even though my dad (who wasn't a senior manager) died in 1973 aged in his mid 40s, and worked there for no more than 12 years.

Today, for a money purchase (as opposed to final salary) pension, that's the equivalent of having a pension pot that is very comfortably three figures.

I am starting to seriously worry - having been a SAHM for a few years (although my NI contributions are up to date so I will receive the 'full' state pension). I have a very small work related one and have just started adding £200 a month to it - probably too little too late - I am in my late 50s and working part time. DH has a bit more of a pension fund and we also have paid off our mortgage and have another smaller property from which we get a small rental income.

One thing we did for our DS was start him off with a pension plan when he was born - we put in the equivalent of the child benefit and his pension pot is now worth more than mine - obviously he cannot access it for years and years so this is only sensible if you are sure you will not need the money before.

We are planning early retirement at 55, in 7 years.
All pensions pots will pay out about £17k a year. Enough for basics.
Then we have a rental property owned outright.
The mortgage for our home will be paid off in just over a year.
We are already saving a decent amount each month, which we will be able to double once the mortgage is gone. Which will give us a substantial amount.
We will definitely downsize when dc have left as this house will be too big and we have learned the lesson watching dp's struggling maintaining family houses that are too big and unsuitable for ageing folk.
Any inheritance will probably mostly used to help dc or holidays- definitely not to be included in the plan.
We've planned fairly well and decided we're not going to be 'afraid' to retire and carry on and on. We've seen people do this who didn't need to and end up in I'll health or dying soon after retiring.
Nobody knows how long they will live so it's always going to be a bit of a gamble.
However we have always cut our cloth accordingly on all different incomes in the past so will just do that.

We were very silly in our twenties and barely contributed; now we are playing catch up in our late thirties. I put in the maximum allowed (here in the US) which is the equivalent of about a £1000 a month. Frankly it leaves things a little tighter than I would like, but we know we have to. There will be no state pension when I retire.

One thing though - our financial advisor really emphasized to us that other that day to day expenses, pension planning should be the next priority. School and university fees for our (3) children should not come before retirement. Here in the US college fees are scandalously high and the temptation is to fill the college savings plan, but he really went on that this would be a mistake.