To ask how much is in your pension pot and your contribution %

[Vistada]

Just that really?

I'm starting to put a lot of thought into my pension (something that in my 20s I thought just ticked over) but its difficult to get a good gauge of what one should have saved.

WIBU to ask (if you're happy to share) your age, salary, pot size and what you contribute per month in %?

Me: 33, £23k pot, £55k PA (only recently) and joint 13%

Be careful. If in any of your 35 years of state pension contributions you were 'contracted out', then you will get a reduced rate. Check.

44, £90kpa, £50k in pension, on a high-risk fund. 9% contribution.

My mortgage will be paid off in 2041, when I'm 61. We will downsize to free up around £500,000 in cash. My pot is projected to be around £450k by that time so with a fair wind, I should be able to retire with circa £1m.

SAHM 56, DH set up SIPP for me years ago, it’s now at 870k. He also has a SIPP in his name.

I'm almost 35. My pension pot is £89K at the moment.

I pay in 13% and employer 7% (plus the extra NI saving too).

From April I'll be upping my contributions to 14%, and also salary sacrificing my bonus too (~£15K) as I need to try and build it up. I didn't join the pension scheme until I was 28. Once I'm over the eye-watering nursery fee years I hope to put a bit more in there, especially as its such a tax-efficient way of saving for the future.

29, NHS pension - 10.7% from me and 23.7% from the NHS. No idea how much I'll get once I retire but at last glance it was estimated 35k per year.

Personal investments that will be for my pension ~ £5,000, with £100 added each month until retirement with a yield of around 6-8%. Est £1.1m by retirement age - I really recommend investing!

Can I check what you mean by the risk/reward here and what you're basing the assessment on? Of course there are people who currently would have been better off without a small pension because it makes them ineligble for pension credit and that is the gateway to other pauments. But I thought that the system was moving so that anyone who gets the full 'new' state pension would not be eligible for pension credit and the additional benefits that go with that. The argument was that this would mean that people would then benefit from any savings they had made even if they were small. That would mean that if the system stayed the same then anyone who was going to be eligible for the full state pension would be better off saving something (caveat if you are renting then it might affect housing benefit).

Of course things are very unlikely to stay the same and the systems are horribly complex and depend on your age and circumstances but I'm not sure how exactly you got to this
You either need to blast a hole by charging your pension to a scary number in the UK or don't build any really significant pot and let the government deal with it once you reach state retirement age.

YABVVU. All threads of this ilk are, asking for personal financial information. It just leads to smug bragging. What does it even achieve comparing with others - they're all going to be varied as everyone has different income and contribution levels.

There was a thread on this about 2 weeks ago as well 🙄

These employer contributions are impressive! Mine pay 3% and I pay 5%.

I'm a similar age OP and my pot is only at £13k. My salary has jumped up a lot in recent years (now £67k) so I do feel a bit behind as I spent so long on minimum wage.

I've not increased my contributions because I want to pay off debt and buy a house first and a few people have suggested I sort that before looking at my pension.

Early fifties and DH and I have a pension pot of £650,000. We're also looking at selling our large family house and downsizing which will make us mortgage free with approximately another £100,000 in the bank. It isn't enough though to give us a really comfortable retirement yet.

Female, 41, 340k and 1k a month contribution (self employed so no employer contribution)

50, earning £44kpa but a good few years of child rearing / part-time work mean my pot is under £40k, (though am due to receive a good chunk in divorce settlement pension share shortly) and current contributions are 5% me / 5% employer. I am increasing this with the NI cut in April. I do have full NI contributions though.

I'm late 40s and have about $350k in my work retirement plan plus about $130k in an IRA (in the US.) I earn six figures and put in the max contribution to my employer plan (about $25k a year I think.) My husband has about $900k, thankfully - we have three kids to put through college!

Such an interesting (though depressing!) insight. I actually hadn't considered it from that angle.

Theres something very wrong with a system that rewards people who don't contribute.

Mid-30s, earn around £85k, normally contribute 40% plus 5% employer contribution on top, about £125k in the pot.

I only seriously started contributing in the last couple of years. I should have started in my 20s. My DF was asking me about my pension when I started work but didn't really do a great job at explaining why it's important to contribute from an early age. I had £125 in my pension from my shop job when pensions became opt-out, and in 10 years that doubled. Imagine if I'd had £10k from age 24, I'd be in a much better position.

caveat if you are renting then it might affect housing benefit

This is the main one. My rent is 10k a year. So any private pension up to that amount, they'd just reduce the benefit accordingly. There are also council tax reductions for those on state pension alone, my mum doesn't have to pay any and she's just on state pension. That's another over 2k there. So you can start to see what kind of pot I'd need to actually make a "profit". Not one I can achieve now. And to be blunt, why would I pay more now just to cover a few years of rent and CT in my retirement?

Yes there is the argument of "well if everyone took that attitude" but I have to think about myself. I think it is part of the reason why there's been a big push into getting people set up with pensions and continuing this narrative of "any is better than none". But people really do need to look at their own personal circumstances. Especially once you hit your 50's, it's time to assess and really look into what you'd be entitled to etc. I see too many people on here of that age panicking about what's going to happen. Do the research, work it out. If private renting, start looking into over 55's/60's housing. There's far less pressure on that than SH in general. But it's basically the same as SH, just for older people.

Of course it's different if you're young and/or well paid. If I had my time over I'd have done things differently. But these threads are for all ages and circumstances.

Age: 48
Salary: £105K
Pot size: circa £300K
Contribution: 15.5% (me) 7.5% (employer)

Planning to retire at about age 62/63

This link to the Which Pension Calculator is really easy to use. https://www.which.co.uk/money/pensions-and-retirement/options-for-cashing-in-your-pensions/your-options-for-cashing-in-your-pension/pension-calculator-how-much-money-youll-have-a9DH71u5ilAl

As a mum who had to gave up work to look after my DC with special needs, threads like these make me feel a bit queasy. I think this isn't a very good snapshot of what reality is like for many people.

Hang on, I'm not "not contributing". I've got 35 years of NI contributions and I'm still working full time now, paying my own rent as I've always done which is money that goes directly into the public housing pot. However there's no point me breaking my neck paying into a pension that will just be spent on rent once I'm no longer working. I'd rather spend it on funding a gradual wind down and what travel I can as I get older which is why even though I don't have loads I'll start dipping into it when I'm 60.

Rather than comparing current pots etc, I think it is worth working backwards from your estimated income needed in retirement and how long between now and then.

The reason these figures sound enormous is because of the huge amount of capital you need to draw income. E.g. a £1m pot at a conservative 4% drawdown would give an income of £40k. Which is obviously an above average income, but some people earn more than this and want to continue their lifestyle in retirement - or, like a PP, I am planning mine to support my partner as well.

If your income requirements are lower, and especially if you anticipate receiving the state pension or having a partner with pension/income, your pot need not be so high. For example if 25k is sufficient, and you've paid off your mortgage etc, you only need 15k above the state pension which is more like 350k in total. And 4% is conservative - you may look at 5 or 7 which could be more like 210k.

These fogures are very rough, but im just trying to illustrate that the pot figures can vary wildly because of the multiple and target income. And it is worth remembering that there are a lot of other contributions that go into your final pot - tax relief, employer contributions, capital growth - so you are not personally required to contribute everything.

About 6k

Sorry its MN i mean £1mill.😁

I mean that you're not contributing to your own financial security in retirement - you're relying on the public purse to support you. While I understand the notion of the "squeezed middle" I don't think state dependency is something that public policy should encourage.

Mumsnet is full of higher earners, it's not generally representative.

I have about £35k in a pension pot, contributions are about 8% between me and my my employer. I've never worked in a company that paid more that 3-4%.

Thanks for that post @DryIce was about to repeat what you’ve just said. We want to maintain our current standard of living in retirement, we don’t want our dcs to look after us - we’ll need to pay for some help. We want choices. All those wants cost money which is why my £250k isn’t enough.

How do you find out your pension? 🤣 I'm 28 and always worked and paid small amounts into it but I don't know where it is 🤣

This thread is giving me anxiety! Both me and dh are self employed- there is no incentive for the SE to pay into a pension apart from tax deductions but the available schemes are rubbish and no employer contribution of course.