Saving for pension - any regrets?

[PCTNN]

glad to read other people are in similar situations to mine

- late 30's
- made contributions when I was a permie at the beginning of my career although only the bare minimum as I wanted to build up a house deposit asap
- pretty much stopped when I was a contractor
- went back permie around a year ago and between me and the company I stash away 15%
- my total pension pot is still looking on the grim side but I've got around 150k invested around
- both myself and my partner are only children and we're looking at 2 reasonably sized inheritances whenever those will happen, hopefully not anytime soon.

So yeah, I won't be retiring at 55 but I won't be retiring long after 60 either. I'll need to make some serious calculations though as I'm healthy AF and in my family we tend to live long. 3 of my grandparents made it to 90 years of age and 2 of them are still alive and kicking at age 97 and 94

[GJABS]

Yes

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...lionaires.html

Well ok not yet, but there is a risk of a 55% tax rate if my pot should go over £1 million in future years.

[Guy Incognito]

Director Company Pension contributions made directly from the Employer are incredibly tax efficient.

It reduces the company corporation tax bill.

The director doesn't pay income tax or NI up to £40k per year.

[Protagoras]

State pension is a benefit which retired Daily Mail readers just cannot compute.

Do they know it's a Ponzi scheme? Also, the qualifying age has diverged rather from life expectancy in many parts of the country.

As someone with no children, I reckon also to use property equity withdrawal to supplement pension income. Much better converting property 'value' to winters abroad as far as I'm concerned.

[d000hg]

I plan to educate myself on investing and be a lot more proactive

don't do it.

use a fund. Preferably a tracker.
Index Trackers vs Managed Funds - The Motley Fool UK

S&P500 is pretty good.
FTSE-100 trackers are historically good.
And keep management costs as low as possible.
Don't piss about managing your own fund. You might get lucky, but not very likely.

I'm with Lance on this. Unless you genuinely find it interesting enough to make it a hobby, I reckon you're much better delegating the work to someone who does that. Same principle as your accountancy. All these people playing with SIPPs thinking they are expert traders... I use a stockbroker for my ISA and maybe I should check if they'll take my pension too.

[malvolio]

Really? Just 68K?

And theres the fella above saying 300k wasnt good.

£300k properly invested will return a pension of around £8k a year without spending the capital. Or £12k a year if you intend to live about 20 years past retirement.

State pension is about £7k a year. However you reduce your personal allowance by the same amount, so it is taxed income, as are any monies you take from your own pension funds.

Basically the more you have saved the better - but the numbers are quite scary...

[jamesbrown]

I'm with Lance on this. Unless you genuinely find it interesting enough to make it a hobby, I reckon you're much better delegating the work to someone who does that. Same principle as your accountancy. All these people playing with SIPPs thinking they are expert traders... I use a stockbroker for my ISA and maybe I should check if they'll take my pension too.

I would extend/reinforce Lance's advice to suggest that you avoid any actively managed funds, any stockbrokers, anything with annual fees in excess of a (very) few tenths of a percent. History shows that you cannot consistently (over the timeframe of a pension investment) beat a tracker and it is good to diversify your trackers. Active funds are for people that think they can beat the market average of a diverse market, and they simply cannot, consistently. They are great for funding the pensions of Woodford and the like, though.

( However, I agree with your point about a hobby or investing for fun because profit is not the only motivation there. )

[jamesbrown]

£300k properly invested will return a pension of around £8k a year without spending the capital. Or £12k a year if you intend to live about 20 years past retirement.

Clearly, this is numerically false, depending on your definition of "about". To begin with, you can currently take 25% tax free. The rest you can take annually until it runs out, earning/extending it by whatever your investments make along the way. If you're stupid enough to buy an annuity then, yes, your annual income from a £300k pot will be very low. Otherwise, £300k is not a bad pot outside of contractor world.

[d000hg]

I would extend/reinforce Lance's advice to suggest that you avoid any actively managed funds, any stockbrokers, anything with annual fees in excess of a (very) few tenths of a percent. History shows that you cannot consistently (over the timeframe of a pension investment) beat a tracker

Are you sure? I've been shown performance comparisons demonstrating consistent better performance. However a simple tracker would seem a good bet if you don't really want to get involved.

[cojak]

Im gonna just claim benefits when I retire!

I view this as trolling - take care on Professional forums PC…