If you’re in your 40s, how much are you focused on and planning for retirement/ pensions etc?

[Peterrabbitismybrother]

Firstly I appreciate many are living hand to mouth and are not able to save, and being able to save for retirement is a privileged position.

If you are in your 40s, and are in a position to save for your future, how much are you focused on this, what’s your strategy (eg ISAs, pensions), and planned retirement age etc?

I’m mid 40s and would like to have the option to “step down” my work a notch in my 50s, with full retirement not later than 60. Although I might carry on if I am enjoying work when that time comes. (I currently find work stressful but I have primary age DC and juggle a lot so guess that’s the norm!)

Some of my friends always seem to have the latest and greatest (eg tech, cars, holidays) and I do wonder how much they are focusing on the future, although I would never ask them.

I have a DB career ave pension, which is pretty good.
However, my assumption is that successive government's are going to fuck about with pensions and pension ages in the next 30 years and make it impossible to claim until you're 70.

Late 30’s so maybe just not at that point yet. With kids at home and having a long mortgage (as only recently been able to buy) my focus is just not on retirement. Obvs usual workplace pension ( same as husband) and a small amount each month into stocks and shares ISAs. Honestly, I see retirement as being something that happens at the end of my life rather than a lifestyle choice, so just not ready to think too much on it 🤷‍♀️

I'm 48 and only slightly... I put quite a lot into my pension but that's only been possible for the last 10 years or so. DH has had a decade of so of unstable freelance work so his pension savings are pretty negligible. I have been thinking about the options - we do have a house that is quite valuable and we own outright, so, worst case scenario (eg DH really has naff-all pension, one of us has to stop working in the next decade) I could accept just downsizing somewhere cheap and dull so we don't have to live in penury. Or we could let a room or rooms once kids leave home - our retired neighbours have done this. Or maybe even, depending on what money we have around retirement, I have considered whether we convert the house into two flats, live downstairs and let upstairs - has the bonus of keep the whole home in the family. And we are next to a high street so it's a convenient place to get older.

I have no massive yen to have a long retirement, I'm actually OK at the moment with the idea of working until around 70. Because TBH, unless you know you can retire decently, there's not much to look forward to so you might as well work. But I appreciate life may have other ideas.

Mid forties and have really started to focus on pension and savings in the last couple of years.
Have about ten years of contributions to the TPS, but my current employer is not very generous with their contribution and only contribute the minimum of 3% into the NEST scheme, so I pay in extra.
Also saving into a S&S ISA as I’d like to retire at 65 and maybe reduce my hours once I hit 60.
DH has an excellent pension and we have nine years to go on the mortgage

@Bellyblueboysorry my post was misleading, by senior I just meant senior up the management chain not senior civil service. I became a G6 in my early 30s and I have avoided going up to SCS thus far because I have an allowance that puts my salary above the SCS1 minimum salary (and my allowance wouldn’t be included in a 10% uplift) so going up to SCS would mean a pay cut and a lot more responsibility which just hasn’t made sense to me thus far! Maybe one day, but comfortable atm. I’m in Alpha.

It's basically a self invested personal pension. You can choose what to invest in like you do with a stocks and shares ISA.

I've had mine for ages and DH just transferred his large defined contribution pension pot into there. We worked out he was paying £1700 a year in fees for a £160k pension pot with Scottish Widows from his previous job. He now has free fees for the first year and then they will be £15 a month. On top of that be has complete control of what funds he is invested in.

They have an offer on at the moment where you get an amount of cashback depending on how much you transfer in and £100 of free trading credits. And if you use this link you get free fees for the year too:
www.ii.co.uk/recommend-ii?ii_referrer=1j8iivevg582y-achtz3nbpe13

Early 40’s and just starting to think we need to focus on retirement savings more. DS2 was born just before I turned 40 so that does affect retirement age for us. We moved abroad 10 years ago and use the rent we receive from our UK house to pay our rent over here (mortgage is paid off). We’ve applied to back pay our NI but we won’t pay for future years under the new rules so won’t get a full state pension. My employer has just introduced a new pension scheme and I’ve increased to the highest contributions. We really need to get a grasp on how much our pensions are projected to give us though. We could retire in the UK and be more comfortable but it’s likely our DC will stay here and so we would too.

Am in my late 40s. Inheritance and bereavements have forced me to think about money. I am now actively planning when I retire. I have been teaching 21 years and regularly check my benefit statement. I plan on working full time until my children finish university or leave home.
The teacher pension means you are judged on your top earnings in the last ten years of your career. I can't go part time until I am 54 without this impacting.
I have some inheritance which I am now beginning to invest - already have cash ISA now have stocks and shares ISA and am planning to invest more in a structured stocks and shares ISA.
I can understand enjoying the money but I am trying to think ahead a bit. It would be great to retire early 57/58 or certainly by 60.

I'm 46, don't have a pension, well, that's not strictly true, I will get £5 per annum from my Kingfisher pension from a holiday job in Comet!!

I have 2 houses, both owned outright, about £100k of savings and my own business.

Never plan to retire, but have gone down to 3 days a week 10.00 to 16.00 and the rest of the week off, and its great!

Very focused. I’m 45 & have worked since I was 18. No intention of working full time beyond 56.

I’m 38 and have been thinking about this literally this week. I’m finally in a role that earns pretty well (for me! Not mega bucks compared to some on here) but DH is hardly earning at all, so I can’t afford to put much in. I’m thinking of doing 6% into my pension, but it feels like no where near enough. Currently only have around £50k in my pot to date, so well behind where I need to be for a comfortable retirement.

I also have an ISA I’m adding £40 a month to. That’s around £4k now.

I am 40 and DH is 46. We are very heavily focused on paying down our mortgage and should be done so in the next 2-3 years. We are also contributing as much as we can into our pensions so yes, finances are quite a big focus for us

@icebearforpresident SIPP stands for self invested personal pension. Before going down that route vs additional payments in to your employers scheme i would check if its beneficial for what you want. If the SIPP has better T&C (pension age), or if your employer scheme doesn't allow you to choose your investments to the degree you would like.

I have gone for additional employee contributions as the fees and charges on my company pension were much lower than SIPP, I was happy with the funds available to chose from, as higher rate tax payer salary sacrifice means I don't have to claim from HMRC, no NI on the sacrificed additional contributions, and I dont risk not putting in month to month.

Generally the default funds, are fairly conservative = lower risk = lower growth. If your company pension allows you, you could look at moving to higher risk funds with the aim of bigger increases. I actually just spent a few hours each week (instead of doom scrolling) for a few months reading, using google, asking questions on forums etc, until I felt comfortable in what risk I wanted to take. Changing the funds I just needed to log in to my providers website and sent which funds.

I have gone for mainly global equity tracker funds, and will derisk when I am closer to retiring. The change is definitely resulting in a bit more volatility, and the emotions arround that can be interesting 😬 but I try to only check max quarterly, and look at the fund i am investing in annually as I've still got a long time until pension age and I just keep reminding myself that warren buffet won a 10-year bet against hedge fund managers, proving that a passive, low-cost index funds can outperform professional investors, and I am certainly not a professional 😉

I am pretty focused, have 10 years of a teachers pension plus 120k in other pension pots and am contributing £600 per month. Husband has 300k in his as he is self employed so up and down, but just upped his payments to 2k per month to catch up. We are 49.

I've got a dc in private school so in two years will use that 20k per year to overpay the mortgage and then always planned to downsize as we live in a big house for 5 people which won't be necessary.

It's a mixed bag amongst my friends, some are open about not being bothered and just having a state pension, some are relying on their husbands final salary scheme, some just don't prioritise it and prefer a luxury lifestyle now and some pay every penny into it. God knows what the right approach is.

I have a widows pension that pays me just under a grand a month for life. It increases slightly every year. I have 80k in a private pension. I'm 44 and have 11 years left on my mortgage.

I'm mid 40's and have really been focusing on it in the last few years, but also have recently taken a 34 year mortgage, so its a balancing act.

When I was younger I was told by qualified accountant work colleagues that the pensions were 'shit'. I know now this was nonesense, and stemed from the company scheme having changed from DB to DC, low annuity rates etc. I was very late in starting at all, and then when I did I didnt pay much attention but a change in personal circumstances, coupled with getting older, made me realise I had to get to grips with it all.

I'm 41 and obsessed with pension planning at the minute! I will get the full state pension, but I ran small businesses in my 20s and 30s and wasn't in a position to do anything else about retirement.

I now have a stable income. It's not huge, but allows me to invest £1000pm into retirement funds. I'm doing a mixture of SIPP, LISA and ISA (both cash and S&S). My goal is to build at least a £500k retirement fund, which is feasible at my current rate of investing.

Main reason I still want a cash ISA is to manage the sequence of returns risk down the line. i.e. if the market is in a downturn when I want to retire, I want to make sure I have enough money to ride it out until the market picks up again.

As for retirement age - to be honest, I don't really think of retirement in a traditional way. I really enjoy my work (self employed) and my main motivation for aggressive retirement planning is so that I have options for different points in life.

We’ve really started to focus in our late 40s.

Piling as much as possible into pensions and isas. Pensions are now healthy but can’t access until 57. We have a couple of years living expenses in isas now so can stop at 55, roughly 5 years away. Will continue to pile into isas now to try and make that 53 or 54.

Not good advice if you are in a defined benefit pension that allows AVC’s.

Mid 50s. Maxing out pension annual allowance to minimise tax.

I am 41 and much more focussed on my retirement than I was a few years back. I increased contributions in my employer's scheme, but also realised that the compounding interest on my pot could be more powerful. Over a decade or two there's many thousands of pounds worth of difference between a 6% return and an 8% return. I looked into the funds my scheme was using as the default and changed the way my pot was invested. Now it carries a bit more risk but the value has shot up over the last 18 months. I'll invest it more conservatively as I approach retirement but its very satisfying to know that I'm making the most of the years I have for the pot to grow. I fund my stocks and shares isa too, and try to live below my means.

Sadly l was not sensible enough in my 20s and 30s and started a 25 yr mortgage age 40. I’m also single. Those who retire in their 50s or by 60 are often those on civil service pensions or who started saving very young. The cost of living plus a huge mortgage means I can’t save as much as I’d like but I have put my full bonuses in the last 3 years. I realise I need a lot of £500k ideally a lot more and I’m a long way from that.

if you manage sooner with the huge cost of living well done.

Obsessed with my pension. Really grateful to past me who did stuff like put a massive chunk of my bonus into my pension even though I was on mat leave in early 30s. I’m late 30s and now have enough in mine not to need to make any more contributions, so turning to DH‘s now.

My advice to others is to make sure you plan pensions as a couple. It is far far more tax efficient to have 2 x £30k pa pensions than 1 x £60k.

Are you saying that your pot will pay £30k per year or that you have £30k total in a pension pot? I’m just asking as you sound like you think it’s plenty but, if it’s the latter, I’m afraid it isn’t as the yearly returns wouldn’t amount to that much.

It sounds like you are looking to take advice and do all the right things to boost it though. It’s just a minefield and suddenly become very relevant much quicker than you think it will!

I'm currently weighing up this decision at the moment. I do have a DB pensions that allows AVCs, but what I haven't quite got my head around is if I pay into that and then they keep changing the rules on the age you can take it, is that far less flexible than S&S ISA? I'm thinking better to do both?