Pension - everything in it, will I be ok?

[Potofdaffodils]

I'm 37 and currently have £15k in my pension, after being a SAHM for a few years. I'm now putting in £400 a month and was thinking of saving another £200 - £300 to pay off the mortgage early (we will then save for DC).

DH puts in about £800 a month to his pension and is saving about the same to pay off mortgage early.

Am I saving enough in my pension? Or should I just put everything into it? I'd like to retrain as a teacher but am not sure if I'll be able to do it for another 5 or 6 years due to family commitments.

Is speak to an IFA or pension adviser.

It depends when you want to retire.
How much will you need as a household bearing in mind you won't have mortgage repayments.
What do you want your retirement to look like? Holidays, days out, private medical insurance?

There are calculators online which can give you a more accurate answer on how much you will need your pension pot to be at what age for the lifestyle you want.

What interest rate is your mortgage? If it’s low, and you can get better interest rates in savings, I’d save more into the pension/for DC now (as the earlier the contributions the longer they have time to grow). Do you and DH not plan joint finances?

You need to have a think about what you actually want to do during retirement and when you intend to retire, then see a IFA to get there if you can't do the sums yourself. If you want to do a lot of travelling, have a big house, lots of hobbies then you'll need a lot. Your DH is putting a lot away.

As a very rough guide, a £1m pension pot buys you an annual salary of £30-40k based on taking out a 30 year annuity. You're taxed on it though but you can take out 25% tax free when you're 55 (but that's changing to 57)

Assuming it is a DC pension, 15k isn’t much but how much you should put in depends on many factors as pp said, e.g. your household income. Pensions are a good way to reduce tax burden, especially if you earn more than 50k.

If you were a sham, I’m assuming your DH was working and able to built his own pot during that time. Could he contribute to bills etc more to allow you to catch up with your own pension?