Pension.

[IR35 Avoider]

There are two ways to make pension contributions, as a regular monthly amount or as single contributions. The latter is better for contractors. You can pay whenever you want, in any amount that may suit you at the time. As someone with a variable income stream you will want vary your payments according to whether you have income and how much, and also so you can fine-tune your tax planning.

Regular monthly contributions are for ordinary employees with a regular income from a company they don't own. Pension companies are required to tell HMRC if a payment is missed, and the employer may be in trouble as a result. As a contractor you don't need yourself as an employee to be protected from yourself as an employer, so avoid all this by sticking with the single contributions option.

I set a salary target for the tax year, put nothing into my pension until the company has earned enough to pay that target, then put any further earnings for the year into the pension.

Depending on how much I'm working, as a semi-retired contractor I make single contributions once a year (at the end of the tax year) or quarterly or sometimes (when there is a few months of consecutive work and I've already reached my salary target) once a month.

[escapeUK]

If you start your pension at 20 then its 10%, at 40 its 20%. Makes a good case for starting your pension as early as possible.
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But at 20 I earned half of what I earned at 30, which was half of what I earned at 40.

The fact is anything that you save at age 20 will be worth nothing by the time you're 65. There's little wonder that a lot of people treated property as a pension.

[DeludedAussie]

But at 20 I earned half of what I earned at 30, which was half of what I earned at 40.

The fact is anything that you save at age 20 will be worth nothing by the time you're 65. There's little wonder that a lot of people treated property as a pension.

Its inflation And CPI is just so wrong dont get me started

Inflation is running at around 8%