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Good Facebook story though eh, I mean..
I'm planning on following my parents example.
Sell large family home and buy a retirement park home (effectively a small bungalow). Free up equity. Spend winters in Spain in a motorhome, and summers back in the UK with family.
No point in keeping money/property in retirement if it just gets taken off you to pay for your care in the later years.
We piled as much as we could afford into pensions, BTL and other investments. Meant doing without some "luxuries" but paid off in the end as (aided my a nice redundancy payment0 I was able to retire last year at the age of 52. Best thing I ever did.
Well worth making a few sacrifices early on to get the benefits later in life.
No point in keeping money/property in retirement if it just gets taken off you to pay for your care in the later years.
Where will you hide the cash from the sale of your home? You do know cash can be used to pay for your care too.
Where will you hide the cash from the sale of your home? You do know cash can be used to pay for your care too.
I'm planning on spending it before I need long term/full time care.
Not retirement as such but definitely a more lifestyle related job which has the added benefit of some income in the next 2 years at 45. I'm too young to stop totally but do want to do a max of 3 days pw and enjoy life at a more leisurely pace. Have been slaving away and saving like a beast to make it happen (despite having a few luxuries).
Planning on winning some premium bonds too...putting couple of hundred a month for both my son and myself on separate accounts, sods law states he'll win more before he reaches 18, cant even crawl yet...
Just upped the pension payments to around 12% p/m although started paying for childcare vouchers for when the Mrs goes back to work which has taken another chunk off the salary.
Haven't even thought about over payments on the mortgage yet, only just had the first payment for a 30 year mortgage, will be 61 when its paid off if we stick to that plan 🙁
Also just had notifation from the Mrs that despite being on maternity leave for the financial year, will not only get a pay rise, but get her 10% bonus and be able to reduce her hours for more pay...and her pension is still better than mine.
Come on premium bonds...
Yes have always saved / made a plan. Any inheritance from my parents will go to my kids.
As above selling the main home was always part of the plan although in my case this was done as part of a divorce a bit sooner than expected (not good for retirement planning !).
Most of my friends who are “retired” from traditional work do consulting or other fun ventures, eg an ex-Uni Chancellor and PhD taught himself phone app programming and has a leading niche app (he is in his late 60’s). Have many friends who left bankng in last 10 years in their 40’s and 50’s and do other such “part time” work.
Two small pensions( one index linked ) paying out now & property investments..(btl)..not showing any major growth ..but there is time yet !
Paid off mortgage 2 years ago - 52 now and hoping for a 'lifestyle' career change in 2-3 years when my wife's caring responsibilities for elderly, disabled mother cease and angling for a decent redundancy - current VR offer is £65k which is very tempting, as is final salary pension to stick around. Will probably involve either selling-up / downsizing and moving to Scotland although I'm tempted to simply rent-out our current property and exist on the income. Fortunately, have no kids so just need enough for a 1-way ticket to Dignitas if it gets that bad / failing health! Can't see me actually stopping work, just getting away from the BS of corporate life.
I wouldn't call it a plan as such.
As others had said we're not quite a JAM, but not far off. I had a 'Gold Plated' RBS pension from 2000 to 2009, between a couple of redundancies, a wedding and a baby we've been all but potless since, 2 months ago we started a NEST plan in work which I've done the max on, which is pittance at the moment, but will ramp up a lot over the next two years. I haven't a clue what my RBS pension will pay - it was 'final salary' and cost £300 a month as I recall, but it'll be a long time dormant before I retire.
Wife, has a 'Gold Plated' NHS pension, which costs a fortune and for some reason means she has to pay a different amount of NI because of it.
Inheritance? Well my Folks are loaded, but there's 4 of us and well, I don't really want to rely on my parents dying to retire, that's kind of messed up.
yes and no
saved aggressively into an ISA for some years, which should take care of the 'lump sum' bit, and also provides a fan/shoot/converg1ence contingency fund.
sticking as much as is feasible into current pension.
meanwhile, mortgage, mrsm & the offspring are busy eating every other bit of cash available
if all goes to plan the savings & pension provide a reasonable level of comfort as I and mrsmonkfinger drift slowly into madness and a sea of rising heating bills which end up freezing us to death
we will never be able to pay the kids through uni or any of that, they are I'm afraid on their own with that one
edit: no reliance on inheritance, as that could well be zero and anyway relying on parents death isn't a plan in my book
I'm 37.
I have 11 years' membership of the "old" NHS pension scheme, which should give me a basic annual sum from age 60 - assuming my job is at the same grade as present in the last 3 years before my NHS service ends. The post-2015 NHS pension is linked to State Pension Age, which I assume will be at least 70.
I don't want to work until 70+... I am also paying much more towards a pension that is watered down (6% contribution, retirement age 60 in 2010; now 13.5% and age 70+).
My plan is therefore to save enough to give me an income in the "gap" between age 60 and 70+. Ideally, I will also save enough to achieve financial independence before that - hopefully at 50. Essential to this plan is a) saving and b) keeping a lid on expenses.
I have the sum in mind that I need to "pre-tire" and have a made a good start by saving for the last 10 years. I will have also paid off my mortgage within 3 years and will save more from that time.
I don't know for sure that I can achieve this (I have a wife and 2 kids), but feel like the more people I tell the more likely I am to succeed.
well I've got about another 6 years to go on my student loan. Mrs Doris has probably got hers for at least another decade, by which time she'll be well into her 50's (mature student). But after THAT, we'll start hammering the savings...
It occurred to me recently that I am utterly, utterly screwed. I have very little in my pension, nothing going into it... and I had a horrible realisation that I was contracted out of SERPS back in 1998.
There is a possibility that I can turn things around by selling up and moving somewhere cheaper, keeping working part time until I drop to make ends meet and hopefully not living that far into old age! I don't want to wind up a burden on anyone, but fortunately my immune system is collapsing so that shouldn't really be an issue!
Sort of, though having kids late on (I'm 46 with 3 kids under 9) has scuppered it a bit. Have a pension and I save what I can, but obviously the kids will get more expensive as they get older so the amount that gets saved will probably decline. Would like to think I can retire at 65, but too many variables at the moment. Will have the mortgage done by the time I'm 60, assuming nothing changes between now and then!
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50 next year and plan to work for maybe another 5yrs or so until boy has gone off and left us to it. The only "problem" is I'm really enjoying work and can't see myself leaving it completely
My plan is based on selling my house, which I've invested a lot of time, effort and money in over the years and getting something smaller. A place in the sun was not of interest until such time as I had a few months at a time to spend there.....in the meantime, there's a whole world to explore.
However lately, I've come to believe that the whole Brexit, euro/gbp disaster might be a great opportunity to buy a place in the sun. With Brit buyers having run for cover, now is the time to find a property that has to sell, take the money from the house (extended mortgage) and rent it out. That way, it pays for itself, we get to use it occasionally and it's ours when financially its actually viable. Who knows what the future holds, the chance may not come up again!
Take up clay pigeon shooting when I get old and give it Big Vern.
Building trade must be one of the worst for a pension, i'm mid 50's and when you hear of the figures ex polis, fireman how many put out fires these days or get their sleep disturbed during the night, teachers, bankers or one of the utility companies
Why were we not told at school where to find a job with great pension rather than the Bayeux tapestry or singing Frère Jaques ?
Building trade must be one of the worst for a pension, i'm mid 50's and when you hear of the figures ex polis, fireman how many put out fires these days or get their sleep disturbed during the night, teachers, bankers or one of the utility companies
Why were we not told at school where to find a job with great pension rather than the Bayeux tapestry or singing Frère Jaques ?
Agreed, a lot of my mates are ‘fancy’ builders, I’m not sure what they actually do, but they’re not laying bricks anyway.
They most think it’s a load of old bollocks or whatever and are opting out of auto enrolment like they owe their employer a favour.
Financial planning is coming into schools now.
Cpt Kronos. Your SERPS pension will still be somewhere, and you wre most likely contracted back in by the provider afer 10 years or so when the rates dropped. Mine is worth about £40k now, after growth / re-investment
So well worth investigating.
My retiremnt plan keep the SERPS money in pension #3 . Keep pension #1 with Scot M going till 55 . Keep pension#2 ging with Equitable till 57. Then cash in P#3 at 59 and P#4 at 61
To achieve this I will pay large AVC's into the company compulsary scheme (P4) which is a Standard Life SIPP product and has lowish costs.
Trying to build up several £100k pots - 10 years to go .
MTG free , Kid free , frugal lifestyle.
I do wonder how many of the own it now generation pay more on their phones / Sky subscription / Car PCP than their pension contributions . Bet its a staggeringly high figure in the under 30's.
Good on the many people here who have planned ahead and saved.. I'm well jealous!
I started saving into a pension 10 years ago not really thinking about it, that's currently valued around £60k (has cost me around £10k of takehome income!). That buys me depressingly little in retirement. I am continuing to pay 5%/5% matched into a pension.
I'm 37, have about 9-10 years left until mortgage is paid off, and also £1k/pm childcare bills for 2 kids so properly tackling retirement stuff is going to have to take a back seat in the short/medium term.
Like many on here I'm planning to keep going as long as I can, while maybe scaling back somewhat. I've managed to get out of the corporate world already after about a decade and have a completely awesome job now ... I can't think of a job I'd rather be doing, has decent life balance and it pays reasonably well too.
Historically I've always saved like crazy (I've a lot of savings) but the older I get the more I come round to the YOLO attitude particularly due to things like the impending brexit doom and the fact that successive governments have been so far off getting the country's books balanced (and have their head in the sand) that we are going to need to take some increasingly painful corrective action in the long term (I'm not sure what, but I guess the worst case would be doing bat-shit stuff like seizing liquid assets or prohibitive tax rates etc)
I think people who have strong provision are more likely to post in these threads than thise who haven't which is about 30% of people over 40 ( from memory).
My advise to my kids has been start early and let the interest do the work.
£1k to start and £50 a month for 50 years @7% is over £300k.
I had my workplace pension summary through the other day. A grand total of £248. Per annum.
I'll be 63 at current rate of progress by the time the mortgage is paid off. I pretty much expect to die at my desk to be honest.
Had a bad few years after uni with debt. Still have some. Hoping for a fairly sizeable pay rise at work so I can get what's owing paid down quickly then try and get some in a pension before it's too late...
I would guess about a third of my peers are still renting as they haven't managed to save a deposit because of wage to rent ratios and I doubt any of them have a pension either. This is the 30-35 age group that got done pretty hard post uni by the GFC in 08.
Shenanigans like [url= http://www.telegraph.co.uk/pensions-retirement/tax-retirement/46332-average-tax-bill-people-saved-much-pension/ ]this[/url] makes me a bit wary about overpaying into a Pension. The goalposts constantly change year on year and many of us (well, hopefully wealthier people than me) will be caught out one way or another..
I intend to be an aged male escort.
Or ,sell my body parts to make ends meet.
My missus has started to ask about a "plan",
I can't afford to stop to make one.
be thrifty till 50, then spend to the end.
This site seems to suggest you need 1/2 to 2/3 of your full time salary to maintain your lifestyle.
As for my retirement plan, I'm on the armed forces pension scheme and have been for about 10 years. If my calculations are correct, if I leave in a few years I should get about £13k pa from that, plus another £8k pa from state pension. I'll then have approx 20 years of paying into another pension scheme with whatever employer I end up with to supplement that. Mortgage is payable from my current salary and should be paid off by retirement. My wife should also get a state pension though her focus is bringing up the kids so anything she earns is negligible. Kids will be earning their own living by the time retirement comes around so if push comes to shove we can sell the house and move to something smaller. No idea if that's a good or bad state of affairs but I can't afford to pay additional contributions into another pension at the moment.
Other than that, hope but keep the webley in the bottom drawer if it all goes tits up!
Sandy the pig - that link is [u]not[/u] a reason not pay into a pension, did you see how few people it was affecting? And most people in any sort of danger will have an accountant or FA to advise them on it. Having a million quid in a pension pot would be a nice problem to have!
Depends what you mean by "retire".
I got early retirement almost 9 years ago so already draw a (obviously much reduced) pension but that was too young an age to really give up working so I started a whole new career in the world of bicycles. The income from the part time work I now do is all paid into a private pension and I'll continue to do that until I finally give up (and who knows when that will be).
I've never fancied the notion of slipping off abroad somewhere and I'm not sure that selling my current house would give me enough funds to maintain two houses so I reckon I'll be stopping here.
Folk tell me that I'm "lucky" to be in the position I am but much of that was down to choices - of career, of employer, of lifestyle, of expenditure.
tlr - that's true but the point I was trying to make is the government are constantly changing the goalposts and will (IMO) need to continue to do so to make ends meet.
tlr - that's true but the point I was trying to make is the government are constantly changing the goalposts and will (IMO) need to continue to do so to make ends meet.
Those changes, and the tax relief taper, have nothing to do with making ends meet as far as the pension bill is concerned. They ar just a complicated way of raising a small amount of additional tax revenue so that they can be “seen” to be “taxing the rich” whilst not actually achieving much other than creating confusion. Stability is what is needed in pension savings not constant tinkering!
No pension, no intention of getting one too.
We have finished the mortgage though,
Sell up, move to Goa.
Money should last 30 years. More than enough.
We have a place in the sun (actually its in Kerry so it's a place in the rain) and our plan would be to move there and rent out our london home to augment our pensions. The barrier is likely to be our parents and having to care for them until we are quite old too, nobody warns you about that bit when you're young. However our house in Kerry has been the second best thing we've bought (house in London being the best financially).
Its become interesting this. Theres quite a few more “just saving a bit” and hoping for the best and/or accepting a mediocre lifestyle after mandarory retirement age than i expected from STW. I guess im in that camp. I have a current 5% matched work pension and two pitiful private ones that have been going since i was 18. Im sure one of the private ones is contracted out of serps but not sure what that means tbh.
Should finish the mortgage at 60. I save regularly into Premium Bonds and although hope to win enough to pay it one day winnings are represented as reinvestment and it effectively sits as a “retirement” fund to be used in 20 years or so as appropriate. I work in Sales so we live off my/Mrs K flat salary and use the comissions to clear annual essentials like car and house insurances, and for extras like Hols etc a year in arrears so we can pay cash, theres always a chance one day they’ll be enough for a mortgage overpayment to reduce the term.
Finally, for us we’ll hope to use equity in our London home to retire into a detatched house for two either in rural England or the Carribean on a one way trip. Id be happy with a small job, decent Rum on a porch in the evening and a bike ride every day until its time to go.
My biggest hope on reaching retirement age is that by that time ive done enough to set my kids on a good path financially and morally to live decent lives as mine enters its twilight years.
Always worth adding you can check your ni record at :
https://www.gov.uk/check-national-insurance-record
If you have never done it its worthwhile, I found 2 years MIA from about 18 years ago, all sorted now.
mortages are paid off next year when I am 57
I have a partial NHS pension - I am going to retire on my 60th birthday.
We won't have a lot of money - with bits of pensions and income from a rental we will have around £20 000 pa. that will have to do. We will get a bit for letting our flat out as a holiday let while we go walkabout
Plans - loads of them. First year we will walk the Cape Wrath trail as a warm up then off to Bolivia to solo a 20 000' peak, then Patagonia for some trekking. Second year will be road trip around aus and a tour of NZ. Other plans are to cycle down the Rhine and up the Danube with excursions into Transylvania and Bohemia, Follow a cricket tour in India, over winter with a friend in the Yukon. We also want to do a really long walk of a couple of thousand miles
I save regularly into Premium Bonds and although hope to win enough to pay it one day winnings are represented as reinvestment and it effectively sits as a “retirement” fund to be used in 20 years or so as appropriate.
Why premium bonds and not a stocks and shares ISA? I have money in premium bonds but it's only sitting there until I can pay it into a stocks and shares isa in April next year.
Why premium bonds and not a stocks and shares ISA?
I didn't mention it but I do have a stocks and shares ISA albeit low risk. FWIW including the tax efficiency the Premium Bonds have made more money in the last year.
I transferred my army pension pot into the fire service so I could get full pension and leave a little bit earlier. Unfortunately now I have to work an extra ten years anyway, I've requested my army pot back out but been told it's gone, been eaten by the pot as they put it. It counts for something but I can't remove it.
So plans ruined again, they already made changes in 2006
So at the min I pay about 400 a month into a pension that I've to stay in ten years longer and it's worth loads less. But I can't pull out as they've stopped us being able to transfer it out and if I put it on hold I loose any index linked benefits I've got left after the 2006 changes and can't access it til 67. Funking govt asshats
No mortgage now (but also no pension) so save for next 10 years ( although this will mean getting a job again stop being semi-retired)
Pack kids off to Uni (I should be 50 by then)
Then sell house in London and move to Wales / Yorkshire and live like a Lord and retire properly at 50
Do the odd day/week of consulting for pocket money
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Always worth adding you can check your ni record at :
Top tip from @phead, I found a couple of holes in mine. As a story my father made some back payments years ago which totalled less than he subsequently received in benefits (this was due to him retiring early so having stopped paying NI). A Labour MP had raised this in the HoC that Govt should be compelled to write to people to tell them this.
Regrading the pension cap of £1m - certainly something which p.sses me off - when it was introduced it was £1.8m and instead of growing with inflation its been slashed to £1m. As above Civil servants and MPs (eg Corbyn, Abbott etc etc) have pensions worth £1.8m but the rest of us who have to save for our retirement are capped at half that.
The posters (@sandythepig) point is relevant as “large pots of cash” are an easy target for the Government, remember property stamp duty was introduced on “high end” / “luxury” homes originally but now applies to many very normal houses. People should save for their retirement but there are other ways than through a pension plan
Heroin.