How much into pension to make it an amount that ' makes a difference '

[worldwidetravel2017]

Im nearly 39..

I have some small pensions atm - just transfering all to put into same pot.

My dad acted at 35
So he could retire at 55
( re private pension).

If i wanted to act at 40 -
So i could have a,half decent private pension at 60
.

Any ideas - any ball park as to how much monthly or yearly id need to save/ invest

Thanks

What do you mean ‘acted’?

There’s no hard and fast rule, but often the following is batted around:
Take your age when you start contributing, divide it by 2. This, as a guide, is about what needs to go in.

Clearly, there’s a stack of variables. There’s some good online calculators you can play with to see what pot size that could give you & then figure out if you need more or not.

How much do you have available? From your salary? What is company scheme? There is maxyou can put in to get govt top.up
Will putting in 50 or 500 or 5000 mean you do not eat?

'Acted '
As in put in enough

And thanks

You would need to be putting in about 30% of your annual salary (this includes both employer and employee contributions) since you have started at 40 but you want to retire "early" at 60

We played around with this yesterday for defined contribution pensions. It says to aim for 50pc of working income.
it seems to add in your state pension in the final total and tells you the shortfall of your target.
and you can adjust the payments in so you can see what happens to the figures.

https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/pensions-and-retirement/pensions-basics/pension-calculator

Much depends on what you call "half decent"

To get a £30k pension you need about a million.

Thats if you take your 25% lump sum

I opted into mine at 17 and I was lucky that it was non contributory for about 20 years and then paid 7% into my DC pension which my company then added a further 15%. I was lucky to be able to retire at 54. I would start paying in as much as you can as soon as you can, the earlier the better.

A VERY rough guide is 1/2 your age when you start contributioning, i.e. start at 40 then 20% of earnings. Factor in wanting to retire early and you'll need to increase that.

But, what spare cash do you have to contribute? It is all well and good someone saying 25% (or whatever) if you don't have that available to put into your pension.

My parents both live off my dads private pension atm

Thats about 1400 a month into their account

( they have savings for holidays etc and they own their house)

”acted” is a weird way to phrase it.

why would you set a date sometime in the future to “act”? The sooner you start putting money into pensions the more time they have to grow.

you’re nearly 40, you’ve had what, 15 to 20 year minimum working to “act”. Do you have a workplace pension? What have you been doing so far.

don’t wait to “act”. Start now. See if work has a contributory scheme like AVC’s you can start. Mine does and for every 50 salary I put in nearly £80 goes into avc. I can withdraw the lump sum at 55.

if unit, get a sipp open and start putting what you can afford in. £10, £20, £100 per month again will net tax relief and start building value.

if you’re looking to cover the gap between 60 and state pension age you need to work out how much you’ll need to live on per year. For example by 60 will you be mortgage free? What are your monthly expenses?

so say you can live on £1500/month as per pp, you need roughly 150k to get you to 68.

sooner you start the sooner you’ll reach that figure with interest etc.

I started saving into a pension the first opportunity I had which was in 2002. I was told the half your age %age.

Only no one told me it was half your age when you started so I’ve been increasing the %age ever since. Sometimes this was easy e.g. when the tax free allowance increased, I’d increase my pension savings and not notice too much of a difference in take home.

I’m now not doing half. I save about 18% of my salary into a pension (this includes an employer contribution) but am part time and in a low paid sector so it’s not actually that much.

I’m trying to work out a way to increase my pension contributions without it hurting every month. Ideally I’d like to go up to about 25%. Might have to wait until we’ve cleared some debt and finished supporting 2 DC through Uni.

I was SAHM for a long time so didn't contribute to a pension at all. I have a very small DB pension pre DCs and a DC from before the DCs which I forgot about and has turned into a decent sum.

But since I returned to work I have prioritised my pension and have been putting about 35% of my salary into it (I'm 55) and it has grown quite a bit. This is the maximum I am allowed at work as I can't go below min wage. I also contribute to my SIPP outside of work.

However it is DH who has a much bigger pot and has been maxing it out for the past 10 years or so.

If I were you I would put in as much as you can afford as the longer it gets to compound the bigger the eventual pot.