To think that a lot of us will be in trouble when we retire...

[Fleetheart]

This generation seems very unlike the previous ones in that we take out loans for everything, buy holidays on credit, kitchens on credit, new clothes etc etc. And pension schemes are getting less and less generous. And most of us don’t understand them anyway. I’ve always earned well, but have split up from partner, so still have s lot on my mortgage, no savings, and really not very much in my random pension schemes most of which are money purchase schemes and won’t pay a lot. And I know many people of my age (mid 50s) who have no pension at all. And meanwhile the govt is being less and less generous. What will become of us all?

Proof that £100k or even £69k pensions are impossible.

www.sanlam.co.uk/knowledge-hub/insights/how-far-will-a-1m-pension-pot-go

I was just playing with the teachers website. Based on an age of 41 and a total of 50 years contributions (no breaks) and a current salary of £45,000 I'd get a annual pension of £54,000 and a lump sum of £34,000!

I'm going to retrain as a teacher! Bloody hell!!!!

There’s no way you would be on £69k pa pension as a ‘normal pay scale’ teacher. Sign in as yourself and look at the forecast for you personally.

@Pineapple1 My husband is one of the highest paid teachers pension members in U.K. His pension, after 45 years, service is around £145k but he’s salary is well above the usual teacher payscales and has been for many years.
As a teacher on £100 with 45 years service you’d be looking at about £50k plus a lump sum. Unless you’re both on over £200k you’ve miscalculated somewhere.

Belindabelle I’d want at least £150k annually for the two of us but we’ll have slightly more, all things being equal.

50 years as a teacher!

I’m on a 20k salary and have only just started paying into a pension a couple of years ago due to auto-enrolment. It’s only a few percent and has taken a noticeable chunk out of my disposable income so I can’t afford a private pension on top. I’ve cut down on as much as I can, we are down to one car now and only have a holiday every few years. My DH and I own our home outright due to inheritance so at least we won’t have to worry about paying the mortgage. Once our DD is out of nursery we may be able to start saving.

@CherryPavlova oh god is he Craig Tunstall 🙈😂

I have no pension. Not a private one nor a work one.
I own no property, I rent my home. I have no savings.

I'm middle aged. If I reach pensionable age I will count myself lucky and live as modestly as I do now.

Some the posts on this thread give me the impression that the contributors would feel positively deprived if they haven't got 40k plus p.a. to live on. If that's what they feel they need I'm jolly glad that they'll have it but I don't personally find that sort of sum essential.

Yes it is scary and I think we will have a problem. I worry about my dcs getting on the property ladder.

I think dh and I will be ok but only because we have been very fortunate to get an inheritance on my side. We know how lucky we are. We used this to pay off our mortgage so are mortgage free. We invested the rest so hopefully in our old age we can sell the shares and have a lump sum for our retirement. Or for care home fees. We both pay into a monthly pension but not much and we only started a few years ago. I have been freelance or worked part time for years so my company pension is tiny. I am 38, dh 40 so still have time to increase this, I hope, as I return to work now dcs are older and dh earning potential increases.

We plan to downsize when the time comes and release equity. We hope we can use the investments to help dcs on the property ladder rather than for our own retirement but we will see. Any other inheritance or increase in earnings we get in the future will go to increase our monthly pension payment.

I have friends in their late 30s/early 40s who don't have pensions, even though they have similar income to ours, and have no plan to start one.

All bets are off now as we enter uncharted territory.

Craig is much too young to be considering retirement - and much too young for me. Not everyone in teachers pension scheme is actually working as a teacher or head. Many schemes allow you to remain when you move jobs.

Teachers pension is a maximum of forty five years. After that you have to put your money elsewhere.

These teacher pensions are unbelievable 🤯
I should have trained as a teacher!

@CherryPavlova I was only joshing!

namby, I quite like the idea of a successful younger man!

@lboogy it sounds pretty similar to the civil service pension if the previous divide by 80 formula is correct. I don't think I'd make it to pensionable age if I was a teacher 😂

@CherryPavlova haha he does seem quite the catch!

This lump sum and teacher pension is a myth. That only existed until about 2007. My husband accrued a small lump sum in TPS then it stopped. I paid into the TPS for 9 years as a teacher and ended up with £4500. It's not the scheme it used to be! These people saying they will get 100k a year are in cloud cuckoo land! I'm in a better university scheme now with an actual lump sum.

DH is a teacher and the pension is good (more generous, I think, than mine as an academic - and that's still a lot better than any private one I've ever seen) but it would be tough to get to 50 years contribution at full-time in a career you can't start until you're at least 21 - would you want to be a full-time teacher at 71?!

And pineapple has 100%, without a doubt, misunderstood the figures

@NewAccount270219 are you in USS scheme? Or a different one.

I work in the pension sector (now IT but I used to do pensions work) - I have a preserved Final Salary scheme pension and in the Civil Service Pension under a CARE scheme.

I worry that a lot my friends will struggle - I am 39 and most have no clue, it's so scary

USS - I might be wrong about DH's teacher pension being more generous, it seemed that way but I might have been miscalculating as I tried to account for our different contribution histories (I've always earned more than him but he's been contributing longer) - the current projection certainly has him with a bigger pension than me

Oh God, yes. I’m 37 and have about 80k in my pension fund. But a apparently am only likely to have about £6k per year from the estimates on the calculator..

At least our mortgage will be paid off and DH is in a final salary scheme (just managed to get in before it shut to new entrants)

And we’re the lucky ones out of many of our friends and family

@NewAccount270219 after having paid into both my experience is that USS is better. However they just got rid of the 1% match which was quite a good deal!