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!

The discussion I was listening to says you need to be contributing a minimum of 10% over your working life. I imagine it would be pretty difficult to mandate people pay that much in, when so many are struggling.

Imagine not being able to pay your rent/mortgage/fuel bills right now.

This was me in a similar way. I was a single parent and the father of my child managed to evade paying any child support and I needed every penny I earned to cover the bills. I worked part time when they were very little, no help with child care in those days (and yes I do think that child care these days is a staggering expense and there needs to be more help) and at times I was so skint I had to skip meals. Also back in the mists of time ery few work places offered a pension scheme so I had the double bind of no money and no scheme other than through a private provider which was unaffordable Fast forward and I could only afford to start paying in at a much later stage in my life, but thank heaven I was able to as the only reason I get by as a retired person is because I have a small pension alongside my state one. With the cost of everything these days I do not know how many people could afford to put in an extra 10%. A lot can barely cover essential costs.

Both my young adult kids are working for the NHS at entry level jobs. They work hard and after paying for their rent, bills and car (got to travel between sites), they genuinely have little left and feel hard done by compared with some others f their friends who haven't gone to uni.

When I find them that at least they are starting to contribute towards their pension, they look at me like I am an alien. I don't blame them, pension was a very far minded concept in my 20s too. I'm so so glad I just paid into it young and didn't question it so that I was able to retire early and go PT in a much less stressful and rewarding job.

I do get though that they can't see it now as I myself do. I hope it will be worth it for them when they reach older age and they can look forward to a comfortable retirement.

So many young people are struggling to pay rent and eat. They simply can’t afford to pay into pensions.

Most will be women who cannot afford as they are single handedly paying for childcare. All the while the husband puts into his....

I know! She needs to do what a stranger on the internet tells her to, they’re bound to know more than she does about her life!

If you are struggling financially then you have little choice but to think of the now rather than the future. Bills need to be paid now so for people struggling financially, those current bills will take priority because your landlord isn't going to take kindly to ''Sorry, I didn't pay the rent this month because I saved it for my pension instead''.

If rent is a struggle could they not move home for a few years and save ? So many young adults moving out of home too soon without the means to financially support themselves properly. Are they in a house share or living alone?

Finding affordable rent is too much like common sense then ? Ok

I pay in to my pension but at this rate the state pension age will be 80 and I’ll probably be in the ground by then.

Where I live in the north, most rooms in shared houses are £700 to £800 a month mostly sharing with 4 or 5 others.

Yeah this is so true
the people reaching pension age now lived in a much easier economic climate regarding basics and periods of steady economic growth - job market - if they only have the state pension that’s not because they didn’t have numerous opportunities to save - they chose not to or couldn’t when times were good - expecting younger generations to do the same is ignorance

@frozendaisy charities are trying to plug the gap and also the times paper has a crusade to get financial education into schools.

I'm saying it again parents get a sipp open for your children !

This is it in a nutshell. I'm a top band 6 nurse in NHS Scotland and have never been able to afford the pension contributions. I feel sick thinking about it but I don't don't have the £350 a month it would cost me

Where ?

I have opted out because I can't afford to pay my bills otherwise. While I'm still paying 30% of my wage for childcare (don't qualify for UC) there isnt a mission of me saving 10% of my wage on my pension. Removing opt out would tip me over the edge.

Brahumbug · Today 17:19

That's why workplace pensions need to be compulsory with no opting out.

I agree in principle but even having a private pension that you have contributed to is no guarantee of anything. I confess to being scared about the financial future in old age.

Plenty of pension funds run into trouble or have deficits or are victims of Robert Maxwell style frauds. A pension is just a form of investment and any company that is an investing company can go bankrupt - no matter how big or how much it looks 'too big to fail'.

Anyone remember when Maersk bought Sea-Land Services and said it had no intention of funding the deficit in the pension plan because it wasn't legally required to? Sea-Land Services’ UK members were facing a loss of up to 50% of their future pensions. In fact, they later did a u-turn because of bad publicity (but also because they could afford to) and funded the deficit but stories like this really worry me.

I fear that the state pension which is part of my long term planning will get abolished before I get there...

Where exactly other than somewhere like Manchester would a room in a shared house be £800?

???
22% of working age population are economically inactive. Means they don't work and aren't looking for work

Exactly this. I live in a bad area and the rents here for two up two down houses with no garden, no parking other than the street is around £1,200 a month and you should see the state of some of the houses. If you were on the national minimum wage and renting alone (which is all but unaffordable) you would be left with about £550 a month for all your other bills This is why many of these little houses are unofficial HMOs and are overcrowded, the consequences of very high rents go wider than people struggling to make ends meet. There are five adults in the house next to me. There is a community kitchen near me which does a free hot meal once a week and the queues stretch down the street. Likewise for the local food bank which has now moved into permanent premises, a sad sign of the times

So?
If they don’t need to earn money and don’t need benefits, what’s the problem?

Yes, but that doesn't tell you much. Economically inactive will be a mixture of mothers who are SAHP, carers, disabled people who can't work, those who have made their fortune and are living the dream, students, etc.

If they married him, they divorced him and take half but most of them are too daft to get the paperwork done before the babies come along

No one on min wage can afford to rent alone. They’d be daft to even think it’s possible. And minimum wage jobs are plentiful so there’s the option to move somewhere where the rent isn’t £1200 a month ?