What do you hope your income will be in retirement?

[Frostycam]

And how does it compare to your salary at the moment?

I'm finding it really hard to decide how much we should be putting away now, and how much would be enough to live on when we give up work.

If I work until I am 60, at the present amount I'm putting into my pension, I would get almost two thirds of my salary.

That would definitely be enough for me, but DH has a really rubbish pension scheme, although a decent salary.

I'd like to be in a position to help our children, especially as housing is now so expensive for young people.

We're trying to agree this at the moment as well. I've started by working out how much we currently spend each month less stuff like child care and adding paying for work we are able to do ourselves now like heavy gardening etc.
We'd need around 2-2.5k net per month (approx 50% our current income) plus emergency funds. But who knows how much that should be, a run of bad luck with white goods, cars and you could wipe out a big chunk of emergency money pretty quickly with no extra earnings to refill it with.

Shit sorry totally misread the date on the OP!

I presume that your company or private scheme lump sum would facilitate an emergency fund. DH has two work related pensions which give him 50 % income and I have a private pension. We will both get state pension, I wil get some SERPS / ssp too. When you take into account no mortgage to pay, plus no children at uni and only one car needed + no pension contributions we will actually be better off!

Remember that you no longer pay NI when you retire. Nor are you paying x% into a pension fund. So 50% of current salary is often a great deal more in take home.

No work clothes, no car loans, no40% tax, no birthday and leaving presents for colleagues......

Both already fully paid up for state pension, although ages until we receive it! I have a final salary pension scheme and overpay into that by £300pm. DH has old final salary scheme and other pension schemes too. Just tying to get balance right between having enough but not paying lots of tax in retirement. Don't spend anywhere near salary at present, no mortgage, no debt and lots of savings, so hope we will be ok. Shocked at how many people on good incomes don't appear to save for their retirement.