Forward planning is frying my brain. I understand why it's vague, shades of grey and "how long is a piece of string" but that doesn't stop me searching for a black and white straight answer 🤣🤣
I'm 50. I've been employed as "normal" for most of my working life. (Full time, maternity leave, part time, eventual redundancy.) But I've been on short term contracts for the last 4 years which mean that I've been lucky enough to contribute the max 40k to my pension pot. But that might stop at any moment. That pension contribution is outside of what I use as salary. That is...I get paid net into a savings account, I "pay" myself a smaller amount into our current account, I contribute the pension lump sum out of that savings account and the remainder is mentally marked in case I have a long period of unemployment.
I'm a worker by mentality. I also can't see me maintaining my current income for 10-15 years. (I've been lucky in the last 4 years. But I'm not daft enough to think that'll carry on)
Added complexity is that DH is self employed in the family business. All bills are paid directly from the business which take the form of dividends. But has nearly zero in terms of pension.
For someone who likes binary details I'm blathering aren't I 🤣
I'm trying to forward plan what why pension pot might be, what it should be and what I need my pension pot to be.