Other Pension Pots

A slightly left-field post, inspired by ElThomsono's post showing pension pot growth, but I was curious what size of pension pot people have accumulated - in particular as I assume we're all of a broadly similar age range (being on a forum!).

Without doxing yourself, how are you getting on?

Age (to nearest decade): 40's
Age when pension started (to nearest decade): 20's
Pension contributions (% of gross salary inc employer): 16%
Pension pot (relative to current gross salary): ~2.0x (would have been more but recent promotions increased my salary ).

Thought it would be interesting to compare notes and maybe inspire some to start saving!

 

I'm in a fortunate position, I've been paying in for sixteen years and the company is matching it, so:

Age (to nearest decade): just on the right side of 40
Age when pension started (to nearest decade): 20s
Pension contributions (% of gross salary inc employer): 20%
Pension pot (relative to current gross salary): ~4x

On paper it's excellent, I can down tools at 57 having paid off the mortgage and live off the funds until the state pension kicks in. The reality is something will go wrong with the state pension (means tested?), my kids will both need all sorts of financial assistance (absurd uni fees and house buying help?), and the investment will be poor as things globally really do seem to be going pear shaped, as Byron pointed out.

I'm paying in out of duty more than anything else, the real question is "when am I going to die" and it's a difficult one to plan for, financially. At what age do kids start becoming expensive?

 

I am lucky at this stage to have a reasonable salary and have low running costs, live cheap, don’t chase bigger and bigger houses etc happy with my lot, if it wasn’t for family I’d probably be living in a bedsit somewhere

Age (to nearest decade): 50’s
Age when pension started (to nearest decade): mid 40’s when I really started thinking about it but did enter some work schemes beforehand say 10yrs before.
Pension contributions (% of gross salary inc employer): ~55% including any bonuses in, making up for lost time…… prior to my 40s it was less than 4% if I didn’t blow it all on cars, holidays and beer.
Pension pot (relative to current gross salary): ~3.0x
Retirement target – 55-57 not sure what form this will take, or if it will be a reality, too many external factors that can impact it, most likely not a proper retirement, more a reduced work life, do maybe 3-6 months a year for pocket money and to pay for general travel and toys etc when I go into pensioner low power mode, but want to try an enjoy some time before I become too old and decrepid to do anything, so not hanging on ‘til 67, if I can even make it that far.

Started quite late, In one company I used to take the pension contribution as cash and blow it on fun times, I am fiscally irresponsible like that. I calculated what I would have if I had done things properly from when I started work using the paying 50% of your age as a percentage rule of thumb, I would have had a million or so by now…… so start early.

I have been teaching my daughter to do better and already she has a couple of pension pots, her work, plus a SIPP which I also contribute to and other investments etc. she is not yet 18 , so she will hopefully have a better start than me, she likes money, learnt from her mother how to extract the most from Dad

 

I wanted to Like this but somehow that feels inappropriate! Made me laugh though

 

Yup, this is one of my risks, fortunately my first financially responsible thing I ever did was spurred on by the introduction of the Government CTF, seemed like a good idea, this got me doing regular investment from the day my daughter was born, for her future, did it whether I could actually afford it and sacrifice my wants and needs to do so, this kind of opened my eyes to doing sensible things with money as when it moved out of the terrible CTF accounts to S&S ISA I got to see the growth in her account, which was huge, she had more dough than us and went hmmm, there's something in this investing lark, sad that it took that I know, but she is set for all that now.

The number of times me and the missus would look at her pot salivating at the prospect of using it realizing how bad we had done for ourselves

Really helped that it was her account that I couldn't access rather than saving in mine for her as I would have blown it all at the first job loss or financial problem rather than do what was needed to solve such problems and we had many hardships over the years.

 

Age (to nearest decade): just on left side of 40
Age when pension started (to nearest decade): early 20s
Pension contributions (% of gross salary inc employer): 21% IIRC
Pension pot (relative to current gross salary): just over 3x

BUT wife's career hasn't got off the ground before kid, so she has zero retirement pot and just minimum years for state pension from having a kid.

Not sure on retirement age. We'll see when we get there.
1 kid mid of primary school, wife worries a lot about his higher education. Again, we'll see when we get there, 10 years to go.


Inspire saving? I think the recent proposed change to pension salary sacrafice will do the opposite! /rant... sorry

 

Yup missus has similar low pension issues, I have taken a portion I would put into either an ISA or my pension to put into a SIPP for her, she still gets the relief etc, whilst terrible from a tax perspective versus me sal sacrificing into my own the reality is when we do draw pensions we want to reduce tax impact on withdraw when not earning. Still do it now despite her working and have workplace pension because 2 pots is better than one.

In addition to that if she finally decides she has had enough of me I can show she has been fully supported at every juncture and have less of a claim on my pension in a separation, though you could argue I am only giving away what I would loose anyway

She seems tolerant though, coming upto 30yrs......

 

I don't know how to explain this because my pension is a mess but basically:
Since reaching legal working age, I lived in Portugal for 5 years and the US for 2. Nothing was put to pension during that time except my state Portuguese pension, which will be pennies.
During my first 8 years in the Netherlands I didn't put anything to pension because "I need this money now, not when I'm practically dead."

Now that I'm older, wiser (HAH) and responsible for someone else (as she is for me), I've been paying into a private pension along side my matched and state pensions.
If my maths is correct (probably not?), I will have made up for those 15 years of no pension when I retire at the age of 67 and 9 months.

That, together with 5 of years of no mortgage before retirement and a decent life insurance policy in case either of us (mostly me) keels over should have us covered until we can upload our conscience to San Junipero.

Meanwhile, MrsYuu is planning to retire at 45. This neurotypical world isn't made for a neurodivergent person, if she were to keep going neither of us think she'd make it to retirement. My salary and my pension should cover us both.

 

My wifes pension pot is also rather small because she firstly had low paying jobs, then kids with either no work or part time hours. She's still part time but earning enough to bung a big percentage into her pension so it will hopefully catch up. For retirement planning I'm not counting on her pot (except state) so it should just be fun money. That's if she hasn't had enough of me by then - we met at 18 so she seems to be able to tolerate me!