How much pension do I need

[Bluesky999]

I am 50 and have around 60k in pension fund; want to retire when I am 60k with a pensión of around 30k per year. How much do I need to save now? I think probably realistically I won’t get to 30k per year retirement and we may ending having to downsize move somewhere cheaper.

thanks in advance

@Beenaboutabit you don't appear to have understood my situation. My private pot is projected to produce around £10k when I reach age 67. I'm already well over 55 and if I took the pension now I would be receiving a lot less than £10k. That's from information in my latest fund statements. Or do those pension companies not understand pensions either??

If OP went into the USS now at my salary she would get the returns I quoted. Surely the whole point of this thread is to give OP advice on what to do from now to maximise her pension income? Please don't call me a liar I have not given any false information and your attitude is frankly offensive.

Unfortunately I can’t check the state pension. I checked some years ago. I am trying to recover government gateway id and password but it doesn’t recognise my NI number

Maybe we are overestimating the expenditure. It is difficult to say. We don’t buy expensive clothes or eat out much these days but we do spend quite a bit on travelling as our families are in different continents.

I guess lots of the money goes on the children. Hopefully they will get good jobs and will be fully independent. They still have to go through university and we have not planned/saved for it so relaying on our jobs

We only started planning and saving more for pensions in the recent years. I worked part time for a long time, we had a larger mortgage and school fees for one child for 5 years; nursery fees when they were little.

How much do other people plan?

One of my friends have spreadsheets for everything, they plan their kids education/university, etc. Husband already got over 1 million in pension. They are now saving her full salary.

Some people are so organised

@Bluesky999 planning is key - I'm the opposite of you I think and can't imagine how people manage without spreadsheets and financial forecasts in their lives! We're about to embark on around 10 years of school fees so I've had to plan out how we juggle that and pension payments with a plan to repay the mortgage at age 57 with the pension lump sum. So for me it's about loading the pensions up as much as possible so at 57 (11 years time) we can be mortgage free and then focus on filling up ISAs and the pension until we retire around 62-65. 60 would be nice (or earlier) but we're sacrificing that for school fees and that's our choice

I can barely read such threads because my pension pot is not good.

I think I spend too much time planning holidays. Time to get organised

I managed to check state pension. It said I need to contribute 11 more years and will get 203.85 per week in 2040

I have a pot of about £250k and receive about £1400 pcm (I retired at 55).

Are most pensions pretty rubbish?

I’m definitely not an expert but it was my understanding that with tax relief of 20%, 40% for a decent chunk of the OP’s contribution, there’s not many investments than give a return close.

A pension is just a wrapper, not an investment in its own right. Your pension can invest in pretty much the same things you can invest in outside of a pension, but you’ll get tax relief on your contributions/savings. If your pension has performed badly it’s because the things it’s invested in have performed badly, not because pensions are a rubbish investment!

Pension providers like Nest will, when the pension is first taken out, put your money into a low risk risk fund but low risk will mean low returns. At some point (albeit I don't know when because I moved mine to a higher risk fund quite early on when I discovered this) they will suggest moving it to a riskier fund then back to low risk closer to retirement age.

There have been many threads over the years of people whose pensions have badly performed but it's almost certainly because of what it has been invested in rather than pensions per set being poor investments.

Do you have a long term plan? You would expect drawing that much on a pot of this size, to run out quite quickly.

Prioritise getting state pension up as far as you can.
We are looking at is slightly differently. State pension at 67, plus we have about £17000 a year in private pensions. That will do us in our old age.
We are mid fifties and saving as much as we can into pensions (£1850 per month) at the moment with the objective of getting to £250k in pension funds. Just got to £100k. Should hit £250k at 62. We will then retire and use that to fund 5 years til retirement pension.

@Chewbecca
I've already retired- it's my Nhs pension. I'm pretty sure that it was about that much in the pot? Maybe it was more!

Stick your details in here and it'll tell you. Really nice simple calculator.

https://www.hl.co.uk/pensions/pension-calculator

because that is slightly less than the pension pot will earn so you are trying to spin it out to support you for life.

My experience is the opposite. I am a medium to low risk investor currently as is typical seemingly of women my age. My IFA tells me that people get riskier as they get older as they see a shorter life and a possible chance to make more of a pot to pass on.

I'm sure you know already but you can buy missed state pension years, which may be worthwhile doing.

I was thinking the same. It doesn’t add up to me but I am not an expert

Not exactly sure to be honest; any links I can look at please?

Ah, it wasn't a 'pot' then, that's why. It is a promise to pay a certain amount per year for life - a DB pension, not a DC pension which is where you have a pot and to decide when and how much to draw.
Your DB pension may have had a cash equivalent transfer value (CETV) of £250k but a transfer value is not the same as a DC 'pot'.

You can’t make up years that you were not in the country (they are not technically missing years).

Also 20 years ago is outside of the window of missing years you can buy.

Did you purchase an annuity or is that direct drawdown?

Here, except the top up deadline is now 5.4.25

https://www.clarityglobal.com/sites/default/files/research/clarity-state-pension-topupsV3.pdf

Please do double check some of the advice given on this thread before you act on it. Some is nonsense (some is good)! Money Saving Expert is a good independent resource to start researching for yourself.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/voluntary-national-insurance-contributions/

If your DH has a financial adviser already, they should look at your finances as a couple, within the same service (ie no extra charge), regardless of your own personal income (assuming you run your finances as a household and not separately). If they don’t then he needs a better adviser!