[Closed] Pensions - how screwed are you?

Utterly screwed.

I'm 41 and have no pension to speak of.

I am insured though. So my current plan is to drop dead at 65 and leave a hefty payout for the kids.

<hollow laugh>

I'm planning to work until I die. Doesn't seem to be much of an alternative, really - I'll never get a state pension.

Pensions are one of those things our parents got but we won't.

If you think you're screwed with £43k already stashed in a pension then you and I have vastly different interpretations of 'screwed'. I'm 33 and have pretty much the sum total of f*** all after the armed forces rejigged their pensions.

I'm aiming for death in service.

So what happens if you get to retiring age and you've no pension? Do you just get shoved onto the street and moved along with a hose?

Death in service sounds like a plan. At best, I might be able to retire at 70. And by retire, I mean maybe be able to drop down to 3 days a week.

About £300,000 over two pension pots. I'm 50 ( 😮 ) and don't want to be working in 10 years time so need to up the contributions (and maximise ISA use etc).

Not sure. Maybe euthanasia will be legalised by then. Tbh I'd be having a great few years followed by a the certainty of a relatively painless dignified death sounds pretty attractive...

My forecast shows £100 a month based on a planned 9% year on year growth!!!! Makes you think whether it's worth spending half of the saving now and enjoying it, just in case I don't get to the age..

i started a pension at 34. (am now 36)

i was busy 'following my dreams' as a starving musician until then. Many/most of my friends are also 30-something musicians and i'd say about 10% of them have pensions.

And as noted, with 43K stashed already, you are probably waaaaaaay ahead of the average by now.

In fact that's about £255 a month ever since you were 21?

Hmm. Think we're into humblebrag territory here....

44 and no pension, rented housing association house as well, I earn less than £15k/year so there's no point in worrying about my lack of pension

I'm 38, got 27k in one pot that is locked and will grow in time, company pension restarts in November hence the locked pot, predicted income is £12k a year when I retire, not great but could be worse!

Im 48, have (i think) £63k in the pot. Not sure what it gives me but not a great deal i suspect.

'Not' it turns out. My wife has got a NHS final salary pension that costs us a fortune and will cost even more from this month and I've got an old RBS staff final salary pension that I can't pay into anymore but my IFA has told me is worth it's weight in gold. I haven't paid any pension for the last 5 years due to various things - but we start the new company pension scheme next year which again will be expensive but should represent 10% a month between me and my employer.

What I could without though is another bloody redundancy and associated couple of years of clawing my income back up.

Most of my mates don't have a pension and won't until the law forces them to have one - 'the plan' seems to be either "well I'll have a house" or the unwavering belief that they'll become much wealthier in the years to come, but being we're all late 30's early 40's now there's not much left in the way of career progression left.

I'm trying to convince my youngest son to become an MP. At least he'll be ok & screw everyone else.

im 51, dont understand pensions at all, have an engineering pension which i dont know its worth, and when i retire will have half a firefighters pension which i dont know its worth either. yearly statements get filed away without any understanding. i just think theres nothing i can do to make it better or worse so it is what it is.

😯 are we supposed to save up?

I'm 37 and as far as I can see am halfway through a massive Ponzi scheme, but this is a special one because they've heavily reduced what they're promising to pay out partway through and at the same time put the amount they take off you up, so it's like a Super Ponzi or something. They can't tell you what you might get because they've reserved the right to **** you over again at their leisure until you retire. I think.

Actually I lie, I do have a pension. Based on me leaving in a few years and getting a proper job, I will get about £14k lump sum followed by £5k from 65 - 68, rising to £11.5k from 68. Which is not bad. My wife on the other hand, has nothing. So you can divide anything I've got by 2.

Think we're into humblebrag territory here....

Depends on how you look at it. We are constantly told that to avoid retirement poverty we need to save £big figure. My saving rate won't stay the same going forward (I'm looking at a job move with a massive pay cut). I figure we are all screwed to varying degrees..

I started at 20, got hoodwinked into a private pension plan which was subsequently deemed to have been mis-sold as I could have joined my employer pension.
Private pension company had to top up my plan to put me back where I would have been had I joined the company plan.
Then moved to an employer that paid a frankly unheard of 15% into the pension without any employee contribution.
I'm hoping to go part time by the time I get to 55, currently 45 and around £250k in various schemes.
Off all my financial decisions in my life, I think making a pension provision was probably the wisest.

45 here and been paying into a private one since 18, although minimum contributions until I was about 30 then started upping payments regularly now pay in £300 a month and last statement earlier this year was 90k another good 15 years and plan to retire/semi at 60!!!!

Im going to sell the wife to medical science and then go and get 8 ace. See where the cards land.

Final salary pension. Sounds great on the surface, but my inner cynic predicts I'll reach the point i want to retire only to find its imploded, my money has been spunked by some fund manager and I've suffered 30 years of lower wages for no good reason. Ah well, I've always fancied a job on the b and q paint counter in my dotage.

If it all goes Pete tong, my new plan is some fraud of a sufficient level to get me 3 squares a day in a suitably civilised open prison. Somewhere by the sea would be nice.

Pension forecasts are notoriously poor. For example I am on a 24 paypoint pay scale, but the forecast takes no account of this.

I am very fortunate to have a RAF pension deferred to 65, and now also be in a job with a good pension scheme. The mortgage is planned to pay off at 60 too.

I'm 40. I'm not expecting to get a state pension - they will be all but gone by the time I'm allowed to take one (currently 67).

Having been a contractor for a good few years, I started a SIPP. About 70% is being punted on some long odds aim stocks (oil) + 30% funds - only worth £20k at the moment, but if they ever get the oil in the Falkland islands out of the ground I could be laughing.

I've been with my current employer for 3 years this November. I have to put in 4% for them to give me 8% on top.
I actually pay in 8% so in theory there is 16% of my salary going in the pot every month, but I have no idea what the total fund is - guessing be similar to the SIPP.

If it all goes to shit, I'm going to take up hang gliding the week before I have to leave work as the life cover is pretty good.

Currently withdrawing my pension and have been since I was 50.

It was a non-contributory final salary pension so you could say I was lucky, but then I also turned down the chance of various other jobs that, on the face of it, looked to pay a higher salary but without the same pension benefit.

I'm now working part-time and I calculated that paying into a workplace pension would get me a bit of tax relief and an additional contribution (10%) from my employer, so ALL my wages go into this new pension 😆

[i]And as noted, with 43K stashed already, you are probably waaaaaaay ahead of the average by now. [/i]

Then you're all bollox'd.

A pot of £43k is barely worth £100 per month as a pension.

I'm in my 50's and have paid into pensions since starting work in my late teens. Planning to retire by 60.

Think we're into humblebrag territory here....

Depends on how you look at it. We are constantly told that to avoid retirement poverty we need to save £big figure. My saving rate won't stay the same going forward (I'm looking at a job move with a massive pay cut). I figure we are all screwed to varying degrees..

fair enough. sorry, there's a lot of humblebragging goes on on stw.

good luck with the new job, i'm a big advocate of following one's dreams and hang the consequences (within reason, ha)

I have something that ive been watching go down concurrent with the oil price.....makes me think that my pensions heavily skewed into oil funds......which i thought folks would have learnt from the enron story.

How ever i have investments of my own which are similar in value to my pension and growing quite reasonably.

Speaking off "death in service" I foolishly told Mrs Jay she gets about £250k if I die, now I've got to check the brakes on my bike before I ride.

Be based on him cashing it now yes BT given annuities are currently on their arse and he's got another 35 years to pay in.....

Let's just say I'm banking on being an only child and the folks not leaving it to the cats home

I wonder what's going to happen in future? Given auto enrollment, the next step I could (naively) see happening is a means tested state pension - not sure if that would work at all but it sort of pisses in the face of even bothering in the first place.

Then you're all bollox'd.

A pot of £43k is barely worth £100 per month as a pension.

I'm in my 50's and have paid into pensions since starting work in my late teens. Planning to retire by 60.

indeed. this is the worry. [url= http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-3067305/First-time-buyers-need-earn-41k-high-house-prices-push-homes-reach.html ]The average first time buyer is now in their 30's, and the average FTB house costs roughly 9 years of their wage.[/url]

Dare I suggest (without vitriol) that you managed to buy a house in slightly less onerous conditions?

i'm not trying to start a generational slanging match here. it just occurred to me how much things have changed lately. My parents generation bought houses in their 20s, had the mortgage paid off in their 40s because it was only about 3 years salary, and then had 20 years or so to save up for retirement - as well as decent pensions.

My generation are buying houses at 35, with mortgages to run until their 60s (my wife will be 65 at the end of our mortgage term), little time to save up, and with much less generous pensions.

As for the people who are currently 21 or under, i shudder to think.

You're right, we are all bolloxed...

Depends how much of a social system is left. Regardless of your political affiliation it's been true for quite a while if you have an inadequate private pension, you'll end up far worse off than having nothing. Income support used to trigger all kinds of relief on council tax and eligibility for property maintenance grants and so on.

I started paying into my pension when I was 18. I paid my last payment last June, where did the last 40 years go. Only 56 weeks till I retire. 🙂

Wingsuit base-jumping is my retirement plan. I'm only partly joking.

I guess I'm lucky being self-employed, and with a business that's not so physically taxing that I'll have to give it up - can just keep working.

Maybe Logan's Run isn't so far-fetched after all.

errrrrrrrrrmmmm pension?

Couple of pots from previous employers totaling about 100k. Now at 43 have 10 years service on a company final salary scheme which was accruing at 45ths. Can no longer contribute so have dropped to 60ths so looking at how to invest the 5% I was contributing. When I initially changed jobs in 2006 I took a 40% pay cut purely for the pension. One of my better decisions in life.

Starting saving into my pension aged 24 (now 43) and am looking like I'll have c£6k a year to live off so I'm screwed, despite doing the right thing and trying to make a provision for myself. IIRC I'll need c£1m pot to get an income of £25k and I'm somewhat off that, not least because L&G managed to have less money in my pot last year than was in there the year before...!

Don't expect state pension to exist by the time I retire. Will almost certainly work till past 70, although who'll employ me and at what wage I've no idea. Hopefully the robots will have taken over by then and we'll all be on a basic state income.

Stopped paying into my pension in 2011 in an attempt to save to buy a house, to find prices have gone from £250k to £450k in that time, which I've no way of keeping up with. Have moved out of London to try and resolve that one.

When the sub-Boomer generation (mine) realise to what degree housing 'wealth' is not real wealth and they can't just 'cash it in' to fund their retirements and what their retirements are eally going to be like (having sunk everything into property and not saved properly for our retirements), well there'll be plenty of jobs going for riot Police.

I'm only half joking about that - pension-wise we are so seriously up the creek, but funnily enough, subsequent governments have failed to tell us... and when the masses finally realise how dire their futures look, well...

Coincidentally, I've just been looking at what the state pension is - £155 per week [i]if[/i] you've been contributing NI for 35 years up until April 6th (from what I can gather).
I was made redundant after 33 years of contributions, so can't see if that means I'll get a bit of it or sod all. They don't make it simple.