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!

Absolute bollocks the way the young are treated.

You are right; besides people in "ordinary" jobs still pay NI and tax. A proportion of NI should be ring fenced for pensions . Think how many billions HS2 is costing and that came from taxpayers ! A hundred billion pounds would pay a lot of state pensions for a long time.

Its honestly no surprise financial education is lacking awareness of what it will cost to life in the future is not thpught about. As soon as my daughter started her PT job at 15 i got her to set up a jsipp. Not many people know about them but its a way of pension saving early even if she puts £20 pm in. At 67 this could be worth anything between £50k on a 4% growth and £210k on an 8% groth depending on her pots performance a jsipp like a sipp will compound and be given tax relief starting when she 1st starts earning gives her the knowledge that that money is spoken for andshe will only have invested £15300 overall if she then can also do a workplace pension as she gets older then amazing.
Pensions are about starting young as well as maximising what you can afford COL will impact it without doubt but thats because people will wing it and see.
Schools should teach financial awareness, budgeting, saving and investing and pensions in my opinion

Countries without state-funded pensions rely on mandatory, privately managed savings systems to prevent total reliance on the government. For example, Singapore mandates participation in the Central Provident Fund, where individuals save a portion of their wages throughout their working lives for retirement, housing, and healthcare. Pensions are not a global thing, nor should they be a 'right' for those who don't act prudently.

Yeah, I don't understand why JSIPPS aren't more heavily promoted - I'm sure there are lots of grandparents who'd shove in a fiver a month or something. Compounding is magic.

I think that possibly people have seen that pension credit (which tops up someone with lower than full state pension) takes you to £3 less than full state pension.
This then brings in a raft of other entitlements - council tax discount being one. I dare say you would indeed be better off without full state pension. So, unless you are able to do a decent private pension also, it seems almost better to not even have full qualifying years for SP?

That’s a really good idea. I’ve been putting in £50
a month for my preschoolers in an investment account - should be worth £45k with compounding by the time they’re 25.

Just played around with a compound interest calculator, and if I put in £50 a month for each child til 21 into a junior pension it will give them £30k. If they then don’t touch that or add to it until they’re 60, that will give them £600k. Thats crazy. I’ll look at opening that and drumming into them a bit when they’re older about pensions.

I almost opted out of mine in my 20s living in London, as money was tight. My dad hit the roof and I’m so grateful as most of my gains from back then have been in the compounding and investment growth

I don't understand why the Government keep stock of what NI you've paid (to decide whether you have contributed enough to get the State Pension), when if you haven't, you get the same amount in Pension Credit anyway.

Why spend ££££ on whatever computer system is keeping the tally? Why bother? Someone who has paid all their stamps - a full 35 years - gets a meagre £3 a week more than someone who has never worked a day in their lives.

Unfortunately for the Exchequer, the maths geniuses on benefits are making exactly this calculation, and reaching the same conclusion.

Love to see how Rachel Reeves could spin this into "making work pay"...

Crazy isn’t it.

I honestly don’t understand how people manage to miss out on full pension stamps. I’ve lived abroad. I’ve spent a long time only receiving the child benefit contribution of stamps and I’m still a good three years clear of the minimum requirements with 17 years to go you’ve actually got work really quite hard to not get enough stamps

This is very true.

Putting it like that what exactly is the point of the keeping tally of NI contributions as you say for this purpose.

What the hell are you talking about? You think everybody should work until they fall down dead? Jesus that's hateful! Some people will not be able to keep doing the jobs that they do! They might not be able to drive to a job after a certain age! We should get rid of stay at home mothers because they won't have much of a pension and according to you they should be forced to carry out low or unskilled work until they drop dead to make up for it.
It's messed in the head that you want people to be banned from retiring no matter how much they would suffer unless they can meet financial requirements?

The reality is that these days you have to think long and hard about the future, people that choose a life on benefits (and many do when they could work) need to understand they won't have a great deal of money when they retire, people choosing to be stay at home mothers won't have much pension. People who have more kids than they can afford and scrimp on pension payments will have less money to live on in later life. People who don't bother building a career and earning potential will not have as much money to live on when they are older. You have to think and plan.

People always worked until they died. It gave them some sort of purpose and enjoyment and company. Too many people are sat rotting in their houses. The money doesn’t really come into it. They are just existing.
Nobody can have a happy life on a state pension.
We aren’t talking about people who’s been on the dole their whole lives. The people that will pay the price are the ones that had every opportunity to save and decided not to and they should suffer. Why should our children pay for them to have a better lives than the kids are going to be able to build for themselves?

You spectacularly missed the point that actually there will be £100 a week better off when they become a pensioner than they are currently on the dole. Becoming a pensioner is an upgrade for some people.
£100 a week is a 33% uplift. Plus the job Centre stopped bothering them.

I don't know where to start with this or even how to react properly to it. I'm just speechless. It's as if people are just biological tools and machinery to you.

Resources are going to become more and more scarce. Survivor of the fittest is upon us.

It’s a typo, don’t wet your pants
pissing myself laughing though that you think expecting grown adults that have had a lifetime to accumulate a support system and assets to see them through to old age is Nazism
But you’ve got no issue whatsoever with our children never having that opportunity to fund this utopia
What does that make you ?

You are warped if you think people love working until they die! You seem to forget that workplace pensions are on top of state pensions. Like you said if you make the right decisions you don't have to be miserable! My partner and I work and have workplace pensions, our mortgage will soon be paid off and when we are ready,. we'll likely sell up and move overseas where most places are a hell of a lot cheaper to live.

Don't give me the rubbish about people's kids paying, i paid into my pensions not your kids. Many of us are choosing not to even have kids these days so you can't use the kid excuse.

I’m having a happy life on state pension thanks. Worked until retirement and was ready to stop work, having balanced disability with full time work for so long. Sweeping generalisations don’t work. None of my retired friends and colleagues are ‘sat rotting in their houses’. Some have part time jobs, some have absorbing hobbies and some do voluntary work.

Oh, and I was lucky enough to be able to save for retirement, as well as having a small private pension. Some people don’t have that opportunity. I’ve come across very few people who haven’t saved if they are able to- sometimes it’s circumstances dictating finances. Why should people be penalised for that ? And today’s kids are paying for our pensions, just as I did for others when I was working. You seem to have forgotten that.

If you pay into your pension, then we aren’t talking about you are we?
I don’t care whether people enjoy working I don’t enjoy working, I doubt very many people do. The difference being whenever I’ve had a couple of months off due to unemployment for various reasons I’ve been told that I need to get out there and scrub floors.

Who exactly does that not apply to then ?