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!

This makes sense. Given that 25% of working age population are economically inactive, 45% makes sense because is includes self employed who very frequently work cash in hand of have mechanisms to save under business umbrella

It depends on multiple factors, of course. We're only semi-retired at 70, because DH is still running the business he started 34 years ago, although he's no longer hands on onsite. But he retains oversight of the commercial aspects, and is the memory bank for the company. I still look after the pension funds that we have, but not all the routine admin tasks which are mostly automated now.

Our home costs as much or more to run as ever, mainly because at 70 we don't have the stamina for a steeply sloped garden, so we need a contractor to do the heavy lifting. We shall move and downsize a bit, but we are also helping our DC with their rent in the Southeast for the next year or so. None of the everyday costs have gone down because we are retired: we have to eat and drink and stay warm. There's no longer a mortgage, which helps, but CT is £365 per month.

dh and I are looking to retire soon. Our occupational pensions will be about 2k a month (DH) and 1650 a month for me (I went down to 3 days a week work for a short period of years when the kids were babies so my pension took a bit of a hit.) We’ll both get decent lump sums as well. When one of us dies, the other will get half of their monthly pension payments. The mortgage is paid off so we’ll be ok. We won’t get state pension until 66 and 7 months (DH) and 67 for me.

tbh there’s no way I’d want to live on the state pension alone. I’m very glad we both worked full time apart from that small number of pt years I did, and that I continued working during the bloody awful era of high interest rates and all my net pay going on the nursery bill.

They dont “blame” them for their good luck. They blame them for not acknowledging it, for taking out even more just because they can and for wasting their good fortune

Taking out even more? Eh?

Please explain “wasting their good fortune” when most people have done exactly what they’re supposed to: worked all their lives, bought a house, saved into a pension scheme. In what way is that waste?

I started saving into my pension as soon as I had my first job that offered a match (2002). I figured if I did that I’d get used to not having it in the first place. Then every year when the personal tax allowance went up (hah, those were the days!) I’d increase the percentage I saved.

My pension pot is quite healthy now.

It’s almost too hard to start when you have a whole range of commitments but if we can encourage our young people to start in their first job then they can get used to the outlay. Then they can cut their cloth accordingly and hopefully never stop paying in.

DH and I have started stakeholder pensions for our DC. We only pay in £20 each per month but one DC has 48 years of growth and the other 52, so who knows!

OK. So what are THEY doing about it?
Because pps on this thread have been very vocal about greedy, grasping and selfish boomers who deserve to be poor because they have not done anything to help themselves.
Yet ... it's apparently perfectly fine and understandable that 45% of today's workers (who have far more opportunities to pay into a pension than the despised boomers ever had) are not paying into a pension because ... because ....because.
I will say it again - there is nothing unique about the finances of today's young families. The circumstances they are living in are unique, but so were mine in the 80s/90s amid soaring interest rates, or the families living through the house price crashes of the late 90s/00s. The years of bringing up children have always been and always will be the most expensive of our lives.
You can't on one hand advocate for pensions to be scaled back but then not acknowledge this is likely to be an even bigger problem in the future. The ony difference is today's workers seem to know what they are doing in a way workers in the past didn't.

Dunno. Sounds good though doesn't it?

I went job share for for 10 years and I lost 5 years on my pension 🥲. Wouldn’t change it though.

I never enjoy making comments like this, but it is important to say something occasionally. Nobody with the ability to make a comment that is being taken seriously on a thread like this specific one is ever likely to find themselves at the really really rough end of the deal. The fact that you are here and engaged with the content puts you well into the top 20% of the population intellectually. I am grateful to the posters who remind us how life can go very wrong very quickly and disastrously so that we remember the importance of the phrase, "there but for the grace of God go I".

@Papyrophilean interesting thought - nothing to substantiate your statistics there though

Nail on the head. They also blame them for criticising younger people for not doing what they did, without accepting that they were lucky to enjoy affordable housing, endowment and other windfalls, etc.

No stats in my post! Pure supposition, as ever.

Erm… 20% is a stat….

It honestly totally baffles me when people "can't afford to save". Unless you're disabled or you're caring for a disabled person I'm confused. Most young grads I know save in their pension. Like even those on £28k renting privately in London.

If you put a small % away, your employer matches and it's good. You just put the % away and budget with that you have left.

Sometimes there’s literally nothing left over to save when all bills have been paid. I’m no longer in this position myself, but have been in the past.

High intellect doesn’t automatically ensure high earnings. Or even any earnings at all.

But the entire thread is not about people who cannot afford to save. It’s about those who can.
And don’t

Except that I’m not advocating for pensions to be scaled back. Oh, and for a lot of people in the current climate your ‘because…’ sentence ends in ‘…there isn’t anything left over to save.’ Just saying.

Both categories exist, agreed. But pp was expressing incomprehension that anyone wouldn’t be paying into a pension, so I was pointing out a reason, probably the main reason if you ask me.

And why is/was that?

I can make do with 96% of my income..... And then the employer matches.

And if what you had left wasn’t enough to make ends meet before you considered taking some away to contribute to a pension ? What then ?

I only spend £150 per DC at Christmas. We’ve not had an “expensive” holiday for 3 years. I class anything over £2,000 as expensive and there are 4 of us.

I do save £20 per month per DC into a pension for them.

Same sorts of figures of a couple of things (not the bigger picture I realise!) but different choices made.

You probably think£300 per child at Christmas isn’t much, whereas I think it’s LOADS!