How much do you contribute to your pension each month?

[LittlePrecious]

I'm just curious as I've just increased my contributions.

My gross salary is £67K.

I put roughly £750 into my workplace pension each month - £350ish as standard and then I add another £400 each month.

I'm trying it on for size for a year and then might increase it again. I could afford to put a lot more into my pensions, but I want some ££ for short-term flexibility, rather than locking everything away until later life.

I'm 40 with very little prospect of huge salary increase.

How much do you contribute to your pension each month?

I’m 34, on £62k (PT hours). And contribute £750ish per month. That works out at 10% personal contribution and 5% employer.

Thanks everyone.

I've actually decided that I'm going to up my contributions again after next month - I want to make sure the money's actually taken properly for April because HR at my place are fucking useless 😅

I won't miss the extra money each month and it makes more sense to take advantage of the tax efficiencies.

Yes, I was thinking that once the DC all graduate and we no longer have to support them then we would max out our pension contributions until we retire and use that time to getting used to living on a lower income. Tax efficient and will add a decent sum if we do that for a few years. A lot of my colleagues have done similar.

@StrictlyCoffeesame! I put about £300 in a month. I did start my pension when I was 21 so it’s looking reasonable but I would love to put more in if I could. We have always said we will downsize if we need to (house not massive but in expensive area) so feel lucky we at least have that option.

Only 3% on top of employer's 5% however I'd built up a good pot before starting work here (have around £430k) with a small DB pension of about £5.5k pa paying out at 60. I'm 56 and plan to retire at the end of this year.

My employer pays 10% and I pay 18%. It was 15 but I’ve just had a payrise so I upped it. Also pay £200 into a private pension per month. Will probably work until 67 by which time chat gpt says I should have over £700,000 which depressingly will only yield about 25k per year (also chat gpt).

While I was working, I put in 6% which was matched by the company. I also had my own personal scheme after a long period of self employment, which had £50/month and AVC's when I could afford them, my aim was to put enough in to get me just out of the 40% tax bracket. It's fair to say that even without the avc's I wasn't paying 40% on a massive amount, plus I'm single with no dependents.

Early 50s. 50 percent of my salary and employer 10 percent. Want to retire in a few years or work 2 days per week only. Left it quite late so only been putting more over the last 6 years.

My advice, don’t leave it too late, start as early as possible.

Another Dave Ramsey follower?!

Some of you have massive employer contributions!

I run my own business. As a general rule of thumb I put in 15% of my take home pay. In a few good years I have put much bigger lump sums in.

8.5% into LGPS, and an additional 13% into AVCs to reduce my tax bill

I pay 7.35% of my base salary and my employer does the equivalent of 26% (I know that’s not technically how it works, defined benefit etc) so I actually only pay in £450 for a very good pension. I did consider voluntarily doing more when I started receiving a large specialist allowance on top of my base salary that isn’t pensionable, but decided against it, my pension is good enough, need to balance with living for today too.

10.2%

It works a bit differently where I live and it took a while to get my head around it, 7% into my public pension which my employer pays 11%. I pay an additional 2.5% into my public pension and I can choose where that is invested if I want to. For my work pension I pay 9% and my employer pays 4.5% to a certain level of pay, and 30% above another level of pay. My employer than pays an additonal 2% into a premium scheme.

UK pensions are much simpler!

11.5% into nhs pension plus £300 avcs, avcs as want to bridge the gap between claiming my 1995 nhs pension at 60 and getting my 2015 nhs pension plus state pension.

Comparison is the thief of all joy

7% of 30000 wages

You will only lose your pension if you buy an annuity. Otherwise it will form part of your estate when you die (don’t know about defined benefit).
I didn’t know until recently that it’s not an either or situation with annuities. So say you’ve saved £400,000 you can buy an annuity with £200,000 and drawdown from the other half. I saw an article that said annuity rates are quite high right now so say £200,000 gets you 14k per year, add that to the state pension you would have £27k as a baseline then money in the bank.

We're putting in to our pensions plus building an ISA buffer for ages 60-67 when we have no intention of working unless we feel like it.

May I ask how old you are now?

Your plan sounds similar to mine and DH’s, though ideally it would be “no intention of working unless we feel like it” from age 57!

We are both late 40s.