Pensions - it's impossible now

[SouthWestmom]

Dh and I earn a lot between us. On paper we do really well.

But this hasn't been since we were young, and we met late, had four kids and have a mortgage until our mid 60s. We have a dc at uni so have to pay on top of her minimum loan. There is no spare cash lying around.

I started up an old pension of stopped and set it at £30 a month just to have something.
I've just done a pension calculator and even if I could pay £300 a month it would only achieve a pension of £2500 a year.

Wtf do people do? Is everyone else sorted?

Not sure what you mean by freeze? If you do nothing with your private pension i.e don't pay in, it will continue to benefit from any investment growth minus any charges.

Your workplace pension charges should be capped at .75%. This may be less depending on what your employer has negotiated with the provider.

Regarding paying in additional contributions you are financially better off doing this via your salary through salary sacrifice (assuming your employer offers this). Caveat to that is if you are claiming additional benefits such as tax credits.

Oh if I left work what would happen? Can I keep the pension or does it just stop?

Most likely, you wouldn't be able to contribute any more, but the money would stay invested (assuming it's a defined contribution scheme) and you'd become eligible to receive the pension based on those contributions just as though you'd continued working there - unless, of course, you chose to transfer it into a pension scheme run by your next employer. If you change job a lot it can be a bit of a pain, deciding each time what to do with the old pension, but because of employer contributions it's still generally worth doing.

However, your employer should have someone you can contact to ask such questions - do! I was a bit concerned to read that you'd asked to have your old pension transferred rather than asking about the value you'd get by doing so - you do have to consider individual schemes, values and alternatives. Misadvising mumsnetters can't be sued later!

I think tbh there is so little (£8k) in the private one that id rather have it all in one place.