To ask if anyone else aged 45 and over hasn't got a gold plated pension and other funds

[ChristmasShearwater]

I know you're out there. Show yourselves
Its not a TAAT - it's a topic that comes up frequently on MN and every bugger other than me seems sorted!

@troobleflooble

Your last paragraph sums it up perfectly.

Enjoy what you can while you. I’m with you on this! No one knows when life will show them the door.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and Wisdom to know the difference.

Our pensions aren't worth much as where we live, you can withdraw your money for your first home deposit so we are building back up. We are just about to pay off student loans so will start putting that money into the pension and hopefully having a house and that money plus state pension we will be okay.

If I live long enough and haven't dropped dead at work first, I'll still be buggered when I have to live on my pension. It's a huge worry and I'm not even 40 yet!

Me. I have a huge pension and investments compared to a lot of you but it will still only pay me 10k a year.

Yep
47
The bastards have ripped the innards out of my nhs pension
I’ll be on call a full wee at a time 1 in 4 until I’m at least 67. Pray you aren’t in need of my services on night 6 of 7 as I barely know my own name by then now and there’s 20y to go

@ParishSpinster

I'm 41. Have work place local authority pension worth approx £500 a year?! Also paying NI but part time payments so will reduce what I get on retirement.

My parents enjoy telling me that they currently cannot even spend their pensions (final salary, lucky bastards + state pension they ear mark for treats) so are buying and spending with gay abandon. I think their aim is to burn through their money so that there is nothing left when they inevitably end up needing care homes so will rely on the state. I mean, fair do to them for enjoying their retirement but they intentionally rub it in that they retired at 60 and have this money and freedom that they know I don't and won't have when I eventually retire at 67 or 69 or whenever the state pension age is in the future.

Anyway, my bitterness will keep me warm when I cannot afford to put the heating in when I am older.

I feel your pain...with the deaths of my uncle and dad my mum is sitting on hundreds of thousands.

The difference is she does bugger all with it...which is equally infuriating when just a tenth of that would be life changing for me.

Yep, I'm 43 with about 6 years worth of NHS pension, and I don't own a house so.....🤷

Me. My last pension statement says £67 a year

No pension other than what I'll be due from the state, and considering I've missed a few years I won't even get the full pension. No real means at the moment to change my circumstances, although I'm aiming to be in a more stable situation in a few years, but I'm getting on so no real opportunity to sort it out in the years left I don't think, unless I suddenly come into a fortune.

Nope, that's a problem for future me! Present me is worrying about how to get to the end of the month on £32.50.

I read 'Ikigai: The Japanese Secret To A Long And Happy Life'. Basically you pick a job you love doing that gives your life meaning and purpose and you won't feel the need to retire. I think that's the best I can hope for!

Laughing at the poster who choose THIS THREAD to divulge that they recently 'invested' £250k from one of their several pensions in holidays and cars 😂🤦‍♀️

I read 'Ikigai: The Japanese Secret To A Long And Happy Life'. Basically you pick a job you love doing that gives your life meaning and purpose and you won't feel the need to retire.

That's my plan...hopefully

I don't have much of a pension as such, but DP and I have money earmarked for retirement - bought a house just before house prices shot through the roof, then later bought an additional house which has also gone up in value. This makes us very lucky, but I don't know if it's a wise strategy. I am a little nervous because it's all our eggs in one basket. If anything happens to that house we are scuppered.

What baffles me is that my civil service pension is worth so much: £2k a year in retirement. I only worked there for 2.5 years!! It was while I was very young so I guess that is why, but still... it seems like a lot of money. I look at the forecast every year and think that it "should" only be a couple of hundred.

I have a private pension from my next job, where I worked for 5 years, but I may as well not have bothered contributing to that one even though the employer did put something in too. It is worth next to nothing because the management fees are so high. The boss bought it through his brother

I think there is a huge difference between if you own a property by the time you retire and don’t own, even if neither have a pension. Ultimately, if you own and the worst happened, you could move into a much smaller home or even a caravan type thing and live off the rest of the money, a far better option than if you can’t afford private rent (God knows where the government will be housing people in those circumstances in 20 years, if at all).
There’s no point feeling smug if you are sorted and others aren’t, ultimately, it’s a ticking time bomb that will make society a worse place for all of us.
It is ridiculous how much you have to save though to get a fairly rubbish annual income, it’s no wonder lots of people see it as totally impossible.

I've been quite worried about my pension. We're mid 40s and I got a great pension with my last job...but unfortunately I didn't take advantage of it! My employers contributed 10%, and I only managed 2 years of this before going part time. The total pot is £50k.

My current job has the bare minimum pension. As I am very part time now between the two of us we pay around £40 per month in. I didn't know that employers could pay in 3% only over a certain amount (around 6k), and as I only earn 13k now it doesnt asd up to much.

Husband's is even worse and I think he has around £2500 in his. I have an old one from my first job that will pay £50 per month when I retire (index linked).

We own our house outright now, but just don't earn enough to put anything significant into them. Hopefully when dh finds a job we can start to put a little more in.

For a lot of you there's still loads of time to do something
I know that it's possible to save a lot even in your 40s and 50s once the mortgage is paid off and the dcs are independent.
I've been planning on taking early retirement since my 30s and I have been part time since late 40s and will be retired by 54. I have managed to save on a modest wage, as DP has, without missing out on the things I wanted to do. Little and often and I'll admit that at the beginning I thought it's a pathetic amount, why am I bothering? But eventually it will pay off. For example one pension I have is only worth £20k (I paid in £50 a month for a few years) but if I only had that, at least it's something and I could afford to work part-time for a couple of years.

Me. I have literally nothing except my husbands, and his isn’t massive. I’m planning on working forever & hoping to inherit something from someone 😬

I didn't get a decent job until I was 38!

If I didn't get this job, which is final salary pension, god know what I would have done.

Never had one before.

I know that it's possible to save a lot even in your 40s and 50s once the mortgage is paid off and the dcs are independent.

All very well if you don't divorce and take on a new, solo mortgage at 42!

Factor in term time working, a year's unpaid sabbatical to care for my dad before he passed away, and will probably have to do the same at some point for my mum...

Possibly yes, but not easy. There are plenty of us out there that haven't been able to stay with the spouse/partner we met in our early twenties and clear the mortgage (if we're lucky enough to have one) by our forties.

I'm worried. I worked part time for years while the children were younger and either didn't contribute to a pension or very small amounts of a very small salary . Only been full time for 10 years and with not great pension schemes. Current estimates are a pension of about £2000 a YEAR!! So under £200 a month. I'm not sure I've got enough time left to put it right (mid 50s) so plan to work part time until 67 when I can draw a state pension.
I do think women have generally been hugely disadvantaged in the past. My husband says he will share his pension with me but it will still be tight.

Pensions are a gamble. My uncle, always super fit and healthy, never smoked, got lung cancer in his 60s and had part of his lungs removed. He is well now, but gets tired and out of breath very easily. He and my aunt have always lived frugally and they do so now in retirement. They can’t travel any more as my uncle isn’t up to it. So the majority of their pension money is sitting in the bank. It might go on their care later on or it might go to their DC, but they aren’t reaping any rewards from it. And surely that’s the point?

However fit and well you are now, you can’t be sure you’ll be the same in your retirement years. None of us know we’ll even live that long. I don’t see much point in worrying about it, or leaving yourself short now financially to try and pay in for a measly return. Different if you paid in from a young age or are a high earner but this thread isn’t for those people. Even lack of NI contributions isn’t an issue. Your pension gets topped up with pension credit if that’s the case.

Mine is crap. I gave only worked part time since having ds's. It's pitiful MJ annual pension amount. I'm contributing more now but it's too little too late.

Slightly off topic, but I've seen a few PPs state that they will have paid off their mortgage when they retire so won't have any housing costs.

This is simply not true - as a rule of thumb you should budget 1% of the value of your house on maintenance, at the moment that's £2,680 in England and that will only go up. This does not include buying any replacement appliances, furniture etc.

I'm 49 and I have a tiny pension (it will pay £50pm) from my first job years ago. I've been a freelancer for 25 years and a single mum with an ex who went overseas and crowed about not having to pay child support. Only now my eldest has gone to work have I started paying in, but it is too little too late. I still have to put my youngest through uni so can't do more yet.

As well as not having much in the way of pensions, dh and I also haven't inherited a house of any kind. I know people who have and managed to buy their own children a home ( or buy to lets)
People talk in hundreds of thousands.
Our parents remained council tenants.
Lots of very ordinary folk will be millionaires on the back of property.