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!

Your comment is incredibly patronising.

Most people already carefully manage their finance but can't control external factors such as housing/utilities/food/transport costs.

Haven't you noticed that there is a cost of living crisis and that wages have not kept up?

I am always amazed how quickly some people love jumping in to kick people who are struggling down rather than look at the facts first and try to use a bit of common sense...

I think a lot of people now expect to work until they drop tbh.

For others it's just too far away to worry about when they are living hand to mouth.

Believe me you are going to seriously regret this decision in the future.

you’ve got to be realistic. Someone who is forced to contribute £80 a month with an employer matching isn’t going to have a big enough pension to live on.

unfortunately this is one area where something isn’t better than nothing.

But people wouldn't be cutting back if Hey never had it in the first place because it was saved directly into a pension.

I fully believe that the pension age will just rise until it becomes more affordable.

No government will make it means tested because no one will ever vote for that.

It will mean most people working into their 70’s probably but it wasn’t meant to last for 20 years of retirement when it was conceived

Yes definitely money taken for pension before employee gets it. Also employers should be paying more towards pensions.

I have definately seen an increase in much older people working where I live, particularly in supermarkets.

But people will know the cut off amounts and keep under them, people will be getting their pensions out at 57 so it's gone by the time they get state pension or just stop saving. Similar to how they do with tax cliff edges. There would be an absolute uproar from the public sector who get the best pensions.

Which means the young people can’t get jobs

I'll be honest with you. I was auto enrolled and paying in for years. Then I had a child. Then the cost of everything rose. I ceased deductions, thinking. When childcare costs drop, I'll opt back in. Then childcare costs dropped and the price of food went up and up. Then the bills. Then the food some more, then the bills some more, then the food, then the fuel sky rocketed. I keep saying I will opt back in. But frankly. I barely make it to payday without breaking into a sweat. I simply don't have the cash to put a couple of hundred a month into a pension pot that I may never see. I'm one of what we call the squeezed middle. I earn "enough" on paper. The reality is, I don't have enough cash. So, shoot me when I get to retirement age.

I told my DC to pay into a pension immediately they take their first job then increase payments each year. It's never to early to start and if they have never had money to spend it's not missed. Some people just don't bother until they are about 40 then suddenly think I have no pension.

But they will make PIP harder to claim.

Money from the state will become increasingly more difficult and less generous.

Everyone is aware that the state pension is not a lot of money to live on, and you don’t receive it until you are pushing 70.

Almost everyone wants to work, if nothing else people want warm, secure housing.

A functioning society has state welfare payments as a safety net it’s not a family trust fund.

Everyone past working age should get the state pension. That’s just civilised. It should be a percentage of the welfare pie divided between the number who require it.

If absolutely loaded pensioners say “keep mine” theirs should go back into that percentage to be divided between their peer group. This is just being practical because the country still needs everything else the state provides.

This is the start of a decline in the standard of living and that includes retirement. It’s the same for everyone, we are all in the same decline. The golden age of retirement is fading away.

If you pay into a SIPP why do you think you would never see it? It would be a personal pension in your name.

Why would it

I think we seem to get dumber and dumber as a nation...

Are you really unable to understand why people who reach old age and are seeing their physical and mental capacity decline drastically can no longer work?

Or that employers will not employ people in their 60s/70s or 80s?

You will get old one day. Maybe then you will understand.

2 million of those “millions” are people who have retired early or chosen to leave the workforce because they are financially stable

State pension is deducted from public pensions. Well not deducted, sort of included in their pension amount.

It's not about affordability, it's about risk. When you're self employed, you're much more vulnerable to economic circumstances beyond your control. Covid is the obvious example. The recent change of government is another. So the self-employed can't risk sticking money into a pension as much as an employed person can.

It would be interesting to know how many of the self-employed people that they say don't have a pension do have money elsewhere so that it is still saved for the future but more accessible in an emergency. I'm a good example of this. My pension is mediocre against my earnings but I have considerably more assets than many. It would be crazy for me to put everything into a pension when it is totally inaccessible.

I put most of my retirement savings into a pension but also some into an investment isa. This is because there's no point in having a great pension but going bankrupt in my late 50s. I'd advise anybody self-employed to have a pension pot but also a 'hopefully won't be dipped into till retirement' savings pot that can be if the worst were to happen before then.

I can't work but it's something I try not to think about because it's one of several things that keeps me up at night if I think about it for too long.

Appreciate the feeling.

But the effect of compound interest over time is huge. Pay little if you must but pay something. Even a little put by over say 30 years can rack up to something very worthwhile.

Employers will have no choice but to employ the 16 and 70-year-olds because there aren’t any babies being born to replace them
They will have to work with what they’ve got
I’m quite old, actually.
I’m fully intend to milk the system for all it’s worth whilst we still can but I’m also making provision to ensure that my youngsters don’t end up in many of the situations we see described day and day out on Mum’s net because people are self-employed when they don’t actually really have a purposeful job?
People have the second child that they can’t afford
Then the third and then the fourth
It will take a generation or 2 to sort itself out, but people will learn the hard way

I agree, not all parents set a good example or educate their DC about the importance of savings and pensions therefore schools could fulfil this gap in PHSE.

Housing costs eat into incomes & the old pension schemes don’t exist for most now, the current ones are often not enough particularly in the private sector.