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!

But for the grace of carers, AND the State + tax payers. Actually.

Let me guess, with all your posts on here you are mortgage paid off and so very out of touch with the world that the younger generation are having to cope with.

It’s interesting how many people take for granted that the state pension and welfare benefits will always be there. Chances are that they will be, but it’s not a certainty, particularly given the way that the UK economy is on a strong downward trajectory.

The state pension is only just over 100 years old. That’s no time at all from a historical perspective. Before that, people without savings were dependent on charity, family members, or worked until they dropped. In many countries today, that’s still the case. It’s not inconceivable that we could be heading back there. When the state pension was created, we had an empire and were one of the strongest economies in the world.

Oh, look, it's Dudley Do Right...😆

On the third of people with DB pensions taking the full amount as soon as they can... Does this include people who had this type of pension for a few years in a particular job, so decide to take the few grand as cash rather than £1.27 a month for the rest of their life?

She was the carer. I'm a tax payer - I have no problem having that grace. I'm retired btw and won't get my state pension for another 5 years. Still pay tax.

The average size of a DC pension pot taken as cash in one go is under £50k, I don’t know of any figures that state whether it’s a person’s only pot.

I see your point and I thank you for explaining that your financial choices stem from childhood.
I would describe it as a fear.
I am the same, priority of mortgage and bills so much so that I made every effort I could to pay the mortgage off early.
I do think though that attitudes have changed over the decades, and I blame government policy for the state the country is in. Especially Blair and Brown.

Yes this.

Yes, by far the majority is small funds that had been forgotten about. The long-delayed plans to build a platform to identify all funds in a person’s name and offer a simple way to transfer them together - if beneficial - may reduce this in time.

SIPPs have been available in the UK since 1988. How old are you that you’ve had no opportunity over the last 37 years to use one? To have retired in 1988 at say 60 years old you’d have to be 97 by now. In which case you are excused for not having a private pension fund. Otherwise, it’s a lame excuse. And even before SIPPs were established it was still perfectly possible to invest your money post-tax, just as people still do today in addition to having pensions.

What percentage of people works on 0 hours contracts for less than the minimum wage per hour where travel in between appointments isn't considered work and you they get paid per mileage? The answer - loads

3.4% of the UK population which is employed is employed via zero hour contracts. It’s negligible and certainly not the reason why 45% of people aren’t saving for a pension per the article the OP linked.

This is primarily young people working flexibly around studying (12.5% of 16 to 24 year olds in employment have zero hour contracts) whereas for those in employment who are aged 25 to 64 the percentage is just 2.4%. Most of those are also people who want flexible/ optional work for various reasons (ill health, caring responsibilities etc).

Are you kidding.
Did you not read because of the child’s disabilities, she could have gone into supported living at 16 thereby costing the government millions.

@DrRylandGrace the pension industry did an inadequate job of publicising the existence and utility of SIPPS for the first ten or 15 years after they were created. There was little or no marketing spend devoted to raising awareness. I only discovered them because, as a freelance writer specialising in financial services (with previous work experience in pension marketing) I was engaged to revamp all the personal investment literature for one of the largest insurance firms.

When we set ours up in about 2001, it was the first one that the IFA recommended by our accountant had ever done so we learnt our way through it together. Thereafter, the same team did quite a few more, mostly for the owners and directors of small companies who bought the property occupied by their businesses and paid the rent to their own SIPP.

And praise the Lord you never had to make that choice.

Many people may have been unaware of them and not done the required research to find out but that’s not the same as @Katypp ’s claim that they “didn’t really exist”. They have existed for almost 4 decades now.

To be honest it’s a lame excuse regardless because anybody responsible would have saved some of the money earned over their lifetime, in normal investments outside a pension wrapper if they were oblivious to the existence of pensions. Yet the people who makes these types of comments about how it was impossible for them to save a single penny of their lifetime earnings (when their working-aged life coincided with the most prosperous period in recorded history!) are usually the same economic illiterates who start banging on about how young people are lazy (when working aged welfare is still pretty much the same proportion of GDP that it’s been for many decades now and employment participation is at an all time high, as are average working hours…) because they simply refuse to accept that their entitled claims that they should receive far more in state services and welfare than they ever paid are supremely selfish and unsustainable.

It’s classic “whataboutery” to try to displace the blame, even though the national statistics refute their claims entirely. When that’s pointed out usually there’s a 4 Yorkshireman-style skit with their personal anecdotes as if these somehow disprove societal-level data sets. 😏🤔🙄

One of whch is this poster. Actually. Carers are tax payers too. You clearly have no fucking idea how much unpaid carers save the state, so why the hostility ?

I was interested by an article I read a year or so ago, I think it was Martin Lewis. Apparently, there's been a rise in people with private pensions cashing them in early as a lump sum to hand over to their kids to get them on the housing ladder/contribute to uni fees/ whatever is needed, leaving themselves much worse off for their retirement. Naturally, he advised against this.

The increase in people having children at an older age is having an impact on what people do with their pension pots, with more hitting late 50s with teenagers still at home and elderly parents needing care. It's tempting to see that sum of money becoming available as a lifeline for today rather than to keep you tomorrow.

In addition you have people headless-chickening about their children having to pay IHT without thinking about their own needs whilst they are still living.

I'm not rich. Our household income is under £60k with two full-time workers.
But i think your attitide pretty much sums up the way lifestyles have crept way beyond what they used to be. And what used to be considered a extra - eg a holiday - is now seen as a basic need.
We are constantly told on here that families are spending every penny and struggling to make ends meet, yet when i walk past a nursery in my very working class area, you can't move for SUVs no more than three years old.
Soft play, play cafes, takeaway coffee shops, ice cream parlours, nail bars, beauticians, tanning shops, vape shops, endless hairdressers, dog grooming shops - someone must be using these places, yet they none of them existed 40 years ago.
So every penny may be being spent - but is driving a car far bigger and newer than really needed, getting a dog groomed, a couple of takeaway coffees a week and a soft play session really more important than a pension?

I don’t think we can go down the route of ‘saving taxpayers millions’ because where does that end? Am I saving the state millions by not putting my kids in care, or not smoking? Am I saving the state millions by not throwing litter out the car window, or by doing voluntary work?

Either you’re committing an action that is costing directly or indirectly, or you’re not. You can’t really add ‘soft value’ to the economy.

I agree with all of this.

Housing has gone up and is by far a biggest expense. So has food.

But outside of that, nothing has really, and it’s never been easier to price compare or buy things second hand online.

I’m also surrounded by SUVs, women with regular £40 manicures, people who do a day out most weekends somewhere that costs quite a lot of money, and everyone seems to have very nice ‘curated’ interior decor.

Do you have disabled children ? Have you any idea how much it costs to support a disabled family member ? 60 years ago putting a disabled child into care was the norm. It was horrendously expensive. The introduction of disability benefits changed all of that and was considerably cheaper than 24/7 care. The institutions closed and care in the community became the norm. Now the focus is on how much that costs - on the expense of disability benefits with no recourse to how much more it would cost to provide full time care for the people in receipt of them.

A measure of civilised society is how it provides for the sick, the disabled and the elderly. We’re failing on all three. ‘Soft value’ is a sickening term to describe the lives of those who are vulnerable.

I think that's comparing apple and pears somewhat. The point is that children once they become adults are independent financially, as well as in every ither way. However, if that adult is not able to live and work independently and needs round-the-clock care, the/one parent either cannot work as they are fulfilling this role and gets a paltry contribution towards unpaid work or if they are unable or unwilling to do this, some kind of permanent residential care will need to be found which the state will probably have to fund. The first option is therefore by far the most cost-effective from the point of view of the government!

This.