What age did you start regularly investing into a private pension?

[worldwidetravel2017]

I need to get better @ this

22. My Dad was very insistent that we saved a bit each month, then knew how much was left over for essentials and fun stuff.

I started paying into the Civil service pension from 19 years old when I started the job. I'm 40 now, but will continue paying for another twenty years I think.

@NautilusLionfishLike you I’ll be working until lunchtime on the day of my funeral. 41 and while I’ll have two state pensions from different countries I don’t have a private. Sometimes it keeps me up at night. I know I must start SOON but we’ve now got a baby and need a bigger mortgage and and and... I blame both my parents and my education for never stressing how important it was to start one at the first opportunity.

Started in my early 20s, then started AVCs at 29.

I started in my late 20s - I didn't get employer contributions until then, which I negotiated as part of my package (small company). I now have my private pension that I still contribute to, plus my occupational pension (still DC, never been eligible for DB). My empoyers over the years have never paid more than 5% contribution I don't think. I've tried to pay in half my age as a eprcentage of my gross since I started. I'm 50 now and expect to retire when I'm 60. My pensions are doing ok, and DH has a very healthy pension thanks to higher salary and better employer contributions, so hoping we;ll be fairly comfortable! My dad has very kindly started SIPPS for both my children, so hoping they'll be enormously grateful when they're older.

You pay via your employer payroll pre tax, or if you’re paying into a private pension you reclaim the tax, either the pension scheme does it for you or you reclaim on tax return. Or just write to HMRC with details of your contributions to reclaim the tax

My dad always encouraged us to get "a job with a pension". However in my country pensions are useless. You pay your whole life and what you get is hardly enough to live on. Anyway, I moved countries a lot over 17 years, living a max of 2-5 years in each country. Am now here. The longest I have been in a country since I was 24 and last year I was like Shit, I have no insurance. So see you at the funeral home as we walk to our cremation. We will shuffle there together (I dont even have a mortgage. Have very high rent (£2000pm) so cant save for deposit. Life's shit

I was 24 when I got my first proper job and started paying into a defined benefits scheme. I was in that 4 years and it will be worth a small but decent amount at 65

ive paid in ever since into different workplace pensions most of which I can access at 68, earlier with penalties.

my hope is to retire at 60 and live off savings for a while before claiming my pensions!

I paid in since I had my first proper job. The first 15 years or so were in final salary schemes. Since then I’ve ramped up contributions and now pay in 60k pa and will continue to do so until I retire.

29, after a career change into a sector where good pension benefits are usual (still DC though). One of the reasons for changing was realising I needed to start saving properly. Started at about 12% including employer contribution, now usually about 15% monthly then as much AVC as I can to get close to the annual max at the end of the tax year.

When I started full time work aged 22

Private pensions didn’t become compulsory for majority of entities in the UK until about 2013; so a bit curious how some people started earlier? Was it government pensions?

When I started work at 24. Everyone should from the start of work.

18 for both DH and I.

DH will have maxed out his pension next year so he is going part time at work until he can retire, we’ll both retire at 58.

About 30. Been putting in 10% since then. I only work part-time though.

Not compulsory no but plenty of employers did as part of the overall compensation package. Particularly larger ones.

A lot of people replying will be older than you OP, things are a tad different now.

After a year or so in my first job in the mid 80s, aged around 19. Employer didn't have a pension scheme, so I started investing a small amount, something like a tenner per month, with an independent financial adviser who had his own small office near our workplace. Set it up to increase annually by 5%, but as I progressed through different jobs up my career ladder, I increased the contributions myself every pay rise, to probably around 10% of gross wages.

About 20 years ago, I used the fund value (about £150k or so back then) to buy my own office out of which I run my business, where my business pays in the market rent of the office. Total pension fund (investments and property) now stands just shy of a million. Never had a job where the employer made employer contributions and I've not really made much of my own contributions for the past 20 years either whilst I've been running my own business - just the rent going in for the property and investment gains (managed funds portfolio) and the increase in value of the office premises.

You really have to start early, however small the amount, and let compound interest and investment growth increase the fund values over time,

Twenty two. We were all advised to start a private pension immediately if we wanted to be warm in old age.

Which means I have 37 years of payments on an income that has averaged about 2.5 x the UK average wage. Mostly, my employers have paid 3% of salary. I paid in 5%

I didn't pay anything in for one year of maternity leave, one year of redundancy and one year with an employer who didn't pay a pension.

That has resulted in a pot of about £430k. I'm 61. I plan to carry on working for another year or two.

People have been able (and encouraged) to take out their own private pension schemes since the mid 80s, particularly with contracting out of SERPS and S2P throughout the 80s and 90s. Very simple to do and huge numbers of people did it. Back then not many smaller employers had occupational pension schemes so it was a matter of sorting yourself out.

25, because my then employer didn't let you under that age, though in practice,it only meant waiting about 6 months for me.

22 when my employer offered to make pension contributions f I opened my own private pension (small company, only 4 employees so no company scheme). They’ve paid in 10% of my salary ever since (am still at the same company 22 years later but more senior!).

As the rule of thumb for payments is “half your age when you start” (so starting at 22 I should have been paying in 11%) that was a pretty good benchmark.

I started adding more to my pension via salary sacrifice about 7 years ago when I returned to work after my second child. I’m part-time but the total going into my pension is 13% of my FTE salary, or 20% of my actual salary.

I started aged 23, like a responsible adult because my employer didn’t have to contribute ….and then a couple of years later I became a SAHM and didn’t think about it again until I started working full time aged 38. I will nag my DC not to do this! I now pay into three different pension plans (long story) so I don’t starve in old age.

22, with my first job. Have paid in min of 15% of salary ever since (now 46, no career breaks apart from 4-5 months during mat leave with no contributions). Currently pondering when to start increasing my personal contributions.

I’ve been paying into a company pension since I was 18 in my first job. I’m now 45. It’s only been in the last few years since I repaid my mortgage that I’ve been putting bigger contributions in.