45% of working age people not saving toward a pension at all

[FernFaery]

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/may/19/britons-not-saving-enough-retire-pensions-commission

Another looming crisis!

Which is populist nonsense of course.

The number of job vacancies is shrinking because of AI and businesses not wanting to hire in a difficult economy.

Employers are also reluctant to employ young people with no experience, disabled people and ageism is rampant so when you reach 50 it becomes harder to find a job.

So cuts to welfare would just result to more poverty and hardship, not people magically getting into jobs that don't exist.

Not that easy on low wages and many part time jobs didn't have pension options until recently. I tried but my pension is only going to be worth about £90 a month if that. Probably won't get to retirement anyway given the amount of stress and lack of health care I'm experiencing. Trying not to freeze/starve to death this winter will be the priority I'm afraid.

I have attempted to teach this stuff before (a Citizenship GCSE, no less!) and I can tell you that even the more engaged students I was trying to teach were utterly uninterested in even learning about how credit cards work because, and I quote, ‘We can’t even get one for at least another two years and I’ll have forgotten it all by then anyway.’ These were kids from disadvantaged communities but doing reasonably well in school. There is no way they’re going to engage in discussions about pensions. To suggest it as a strategy just shows a complete lack of awareness of how teenagers think and approach learning. And given how many 30+ year olds also think pension age is far too far away to worry about, the idea you’ll be getting 15/16 year olds (or younger…?) to care is madness. And post-16, the ones who need it most won’t be in schools anymore, and colleges struggle with attendance for these types of ‘extras’.

Means testing the state pension - yeah, I’ll believe that when it happens!

It needs to be like Australia where it is mandatory with amounts increasing year on year. The comments were full of people insisting it’s not affordable but the amount of people whose income = fixed expenses (housing, food, utilities) is small. They just find other things to do with their money.

But your post perfectly demonstrates "don't want to" rather than "can't."

We like a holiday and treating the kids at Christmas too but we spend roughly half of the figures you quoted. Our Welsh caravan holiday at Easter cost us £1k including spending money. People seem to think they're entitled to a week abroad in the summer holidays but these are all choices we make.

The problem comes when pension saving is seen as optional rather than a necessity. £2.5k in a pension instead of a holiday is not nothing and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of maths. Look into compound interest and how even small amounts can snowball if given enough time (decades) to grow.

£200 a month, no, £100 a month each between me and DP.

My DP is self employed, so no employer contribution.

By the time ive been in a position to actually save towards a holiday (single parent for many years) me putting £100 into a pension wont get me much at all.

Its not like im starting at age 20 to save. Again its all assumptions and black and white. People's lives aren't linear.

If I hadnt have ended up a single parent im pretty such I would have a decent pension. But my career took a massive hit having children, and then I haven't been able to go back into that career whilst being on my own with the kids. So although I do pay into a pension at my age now, its meagre. And no, I wont stick more in and not take my girls on one holiday a year!

And £300 at xmas is me saving £25 a month per child towards it.....i don't buy tat - one of the gifts is an annual pass to a group of theme parks/days out. None of their gifts end up in a bin....and, in reality £300 doesn't buy that much stuff for children!

Its funny how its the people with a good income lecturing the people with a low income on what to do with their money! If you are on a low income you would understand and not be making judgements about people wanting one holiday with their children a year and getting them some nice things for birthday/christmas.....🙄

Of course if I had SPARE money id be putting more into my pension....next youll be telling me not to save into my emergency fund for car and house repairs......or maybe I shouldn't have life insurance.....or a car?!

It is populist nonsense but it's gaining traction.

Poverty and hardship is affecting workers as well as non-workers.

As you say jobs are reducing but you can't hand out increasingly generous welfare payments if the money isn't there.

And everyone wants the nice, well paid, good employer, flexible jobs. Everyone does, and it's an employer's market right now. Of course they are going to employ someone with a strong track record and decent references.

The jobs which are easier to get no one wants to do.

We have exam aged teens, we are fully aware of the preciarious job market they could be entering, we don't know what to advise them for the best, we are aware that they are unlikely to even have pension contributions on their radar for years to come. We are basically saying "get out of the UK" which they are fully on board with.

Thats great you can go away at Easter and you found something for 1k.....unfortunately we cant go away then.

This is the first year we have been in a position to go away! I dont feel it is a right to go on holiday!
I could not have done it alone. My children aren't young either. Ive been on my own for many years, and just about managed to pay the mortgage and keep things ticking over, with a little pot for emergencies.

Forgive me for not instantly putting my £100 a month for this holiday into my pension pot?!

I dont have a lot of decades! Im not young.....

£300 per child, for birthday and christmas is not much at all?! Fair play if you are doing birthdays and Christmas for £150.

I spent over a decade keeping my family just above water and not getting into any debt, on my own! Could you keep a house (mortgaged) bills, provide for two children and save for emergencies and not get into debt on a low single wage?! Im proud of how i did in a really tough time for me and my children. Sadly a pension did not come into it at the time!!

1. Actually those amounts would do a lot for your pension once the power of compounding is taken into consideration.

2. This proves a lot of people can afford to pay into their pension. They simply don’t wish to to spend on other things which is what your are doing. They choose not to which is why it needs to be mandatory.

Sadly many do not find out until the child is born. Dads like that do not announce they will make her do it all they pretend they will be 'hands on' and all that BS until they have to do it and then they go back on their word.

I have worked hard since I was 17, including working FT while I was a lone parent. I was so skint that I could barely pay into a workplace pension (and occasionally a private pension that I have). I’m likely to have a pension pot of £60k if I’m lucky, through no fault of my own. My mum was an unpaid carer for my disabled sister - working harder than anyone I’ve ever met. Obviously reliant on state pension. What do you think people are supposed to do? Let their children go without food or clothes? We are one of the richest countries in the world - it’s how that wealth is distributed that’s the problem. Stop bashing the people at the bottom.

That’s true of some situations, but just look at how many posts on MN are from women not wanting to work once they become a parent, or only wanting to work part time forever more! Often citing ‘oh most of my wages would go on childcare’ or ‘I’ll still end up doing all the housework and carrying the mental load if I go to work’ as reasons for not being in paid employment. There are choices here, obviously within the parameters which we all have to operate in, but there is still a level of personal agency. Some people seem to believe they have no personal ability to make decisions and follow a particular path!

But from Gen-X onwards, we have seen government after government go after things that would previously have seen as unthinkable. Targeting low income workers, disabled people, carers, children etc. Once upon a time, it was thought unthinkable to remove child benefit, look where we are now. It was unthinkable to raise the pension age but they did it.

There will come a time where a government will have absolutely no choice but to look again at pensions, whether it is removing the triple lock, or means testing or any other measure. There will be nowhere else to go with reducing other benefits. The political fall-out will be relatively short lived because we will have moved to a system where private pensions are unavoidable.

But what kind of work are they in?
My young adult child has a job so in theory he’s not unemployed… but it’s zero hours contract, despite telling them repeatedly that he wants to work full time, he’s given on average 10 hours a week!
He is looking for another job but so many are zero hours.
It’s a lot cheaper for these employers to employ 4 people on 10 hours per week than 1 on a 40 hpw contract. No need for employer contributions to pensions etc.
But hey the government figures look great…

I actually don’t think the state pension should be means tested as I don’t think we should move to solely rewarding those who choose not to make provision for themselves.

There should be a basic amount like now and then strong push to encourage people to pay into a private pension too if they want any kind of decent old age.

Or just do like Australia and make it not an option.

Quite. There are threads nearly every day about the cost of living. Rents are huge in parts of the country where there are jobs, interest rates are rising, unemployment is increasing.

People who start work when they leave education and work continuously in a decent job with good pension provisions and don't encounter redundancy/I'll health/dependents' needs or so on, and were born at a time when property prices bore some relation to salaries and/or had financial help from their family are lucky.

Not better, cleverer, shrewder or anything else. Just lucky.

People who have been dealt harder cards are no less in need of a home and decent quality of life in retirement. Not dying of malnutrition, hyperthermia or a treatable medical condition should be an expectation in a wealthy country, not a preserve of the lucky.

This argument falls apart when we are facing huge numbers of people, who, mainly through fault of their own, will be retiring with no pension. I know a not insignificant amount of people (my own father foolishly being one of them) who have removed themselves from their workplace pension so they will have extra in their pockets each month. Do I want these people to struggle financially in old age? Of course not. Do I think it's fair or reasonable that a net contributor earning, say £60,000 a year, is paying into their workplace pension, paying a hundreds a month in national insurance, paying a 40% tax rate, losing child benefit on a sliding scale, all to subsidise those who decided not to save for their own retirement? Absolutely not.

I personally believe we need to transition to a pension model where a percent of national insurance is invested into an actual pension for the sole use of the person who contributed to it, with additional relief schemes for those who have been lower earners and so haven't built up a large pot. But these relief schemes need to be very strictly means tested - you shouldn't be able to be living in a three-bed semi as a single old lady claiming pension top-ups. Social care is already the biggest drain on public resources. How many benefits can elderly people reasonably expect to extract from working-age adults?

Those who have bothered to save have the luxury of being able to retire early, spend all their saved cash, and then get state pension, all the poor people who who had nothing all their lives, will have to manage on just state pension and an ever increasing retirement age
I have invested a little and am very happy that I will be able to retire early and spend it, no one will take my state pension away as I won't have much left of my savings

I do find it quite entertaing that pemsioners are criticised on MN just about every day for not paying into a private pension or workplace pension (when neither really existed) yet when the same is suggested to today's workers they bleat about not being able to afford it.
Yet on many threads posters are keen to see state pensions means tested or even abolished altogether (to teach the greedy boomers a lesson that they should have planned better)
I wonder how today's workers will manage when THEY are the pensioners who have not planned?

There are some people who don't care what they do if they need to feed their family, they lose a job they sign up with agencies, take zero hour shifts, anything to keep the lights on.

And there are some who say they can't get a job because they can't get on a busy bus.

It's not always luck.

I'm not surprised. It's an issue which has been on the horizon for a long time now and exacerbated by huge cost of living increases in the last 5-10 years.

People can't afford to live day to day, let alone to provide for the future. And a lot of people won't make it to retirement or will suffer ill health for many years or are already and can't work.

I'm amazed by the amount of people who are experts on complete strangers' finances on this thread.

Never in my life, (I mean real life, not behind-a-keyboard-life) has someone said to me "I can't afford the necessary amount into a pension" and I have responded "you're a liar, you can afford it... you just don't want to."

The internet is a weird place ins't it....

Sure. And they're not the people that have had the luck of continuous, well paid, decent pension provision employment that I was referring to.

And a lot of this problem was created by the end of final salary and defined benefit schemes for most people, people would pay into schemes more if they knew they would definitely get a good pension at the end, as boomers and silent generation did. Pensions in themselves now are something of a gamble, I mean you wouldn't lose all your money but it's hard to know how much you are going to end up with, the estimates can vary pretty wildly!