Anyone else not have a pension?

[AtW]

I intend to retire somewhere nicer, like Luton.

Talking of which... where is ???

[barrydidit]

Talking of which... where is ???

Gone permie. I guess he's to busy rimming The Man in the hope of a 1% pay rise to be posting here.

[MarillionFan]

I've just topped mine up again for this tax year bringing the pot to a cool 350k.

As I have previously mentioned, I think a pension makes sense for those who can use it to reduce their tax liabilities. For contractors who can control this with salary/divvies etc it does not make as much sense financially, but when you've hit a period of say permiedom and hit a higher tax rate then sticking it into a pension to claim back the 40/45% makes a lot of sense. It's a case of squirrelling.

ISAs are presently a load of tulip but it may change, but ideally you should be diversifying so you get to

A. House owned outright
B. BTL or Commerical property rentals
C. Divvy Paying Share ISAS
D. Pensions
E. Savings paying interest
F. Cash ISAS
G. Bit of side contracting or working at B&Q

[RonBW]

I spoke to somebody from St James' Place on a recommendation from my mortgage advisor last year but there seemed to be some discrepancy between what we discussed in terms of fees and what the actual fees seemed to be when I got the paperwork so I never pursued it.

My SJP pension went up about 18% last year after fees. I haven't got the time or inclination to bother doing it myself and I know I wouldn't bother if I didn't just pay a direct debit from the company every month.

If nothing else, it reduces your corporation tax bill

[europetractor]

No pension here...

Invest money in guns, ammo, canned food, Victoria Secrets magazines - you'll get everything else in post-Brexit world.

You know it makes sense.

Buddy I have a 400 GB digital porn collection... do you think your Victoria magazines will compete with my product... Don't think so.

[milanbenes]

I've just turned 34 and have no pension at all. Business is good, we own our own house with a decent level of equity in it, fully expect to have the mortgage paid off as it currently stands before we retire.

let's just correct this detail...

you don't own your home, you are buying your home. You will own your home when you have paid the loan.

Milan.

[milanbenes]

I'm 43, back in 2010 I started wondering about retirement, and this is my suggestion for you all

. before you "just start" doing some kind of pension savings, the first thing you need to do, is,...

you need to know what size pot you need to retire on

how to calculate what size pot you need to retire on ?

crudely speaking, and this is what I did in 2010, just take a sheet of paper, or an excel, and consider, at today's values, what will it cost you per month in any given year to live the kind of life you want to live when you retire, so I did it like this... per month

Gas Heating bill

Electricity bill

Food bill

Clothes and footwear

Winter holiday

Summer holiday

Weekends away

Fun/Going Out

Petrol/Diesel

Running a car (mot consumables brakes servicing etc)

Owning a car, discounting the cost of a car over 5 years (you need to estimate what kind of wheels you want to be running around in)

Council Tax

etc etc


So on an Excel or sheet of A4, list all of these items on the left,

make a column for months and estimate what each costs per month

then make a column for year and at the bottom write the total of all of these for the year

then, and this is the useful bit, analytics, make a column % of yearly total and for each item
list in it's row in the percentage of yearly total column what this item's percentage of the yearly
total is

you'll then be able to see, from the yearly total, what the % of each item is, and then you can see
the essentials like heating and food, which don't have much room for manouvre, and the less essentials
like the car, and you can play with the numbers, what if I had a cheap car compared to an expensive one etc

once you have played with the numbers and come with a lifestyle standard of living you will be happy to have in your
retirement, then you will know from this sheet of A4, how much $$$ you need per year to live on, let's say for sake of argument in today's money it's 20k gbp per year

Once you know how much you need per live on per year, then you can estimate based upon your ancestor's life expectancy, to what age generally people in your family live to, in my family it's into the 90's

so, you know what you need to live on, you know to what age you need to fund that, and now the magic part, when do you want to retire ?

Let's say you want to retire at 55 (where retirement means choosing how you use your time) then you back calculate from 90 to 55, this means for 35 years you need to support yourself at 20k gbp per year, which means...

and this is the magic part, how much do you need to retire ?

you need, 20k gbp * 35 years = 700,000GBP

and now you see your retirement goal, you need a pot of 700,000GBP or you need to build an income mechanism which will bring you 20k gbp per year

of course you need to keep up with inflation

these are the basics that we should all be doing or have done.

I've done it, I know the numbers.


On a personal note, at 43, having grown up in the UK with friend's fathers seeing their company pensions stolen, having lived through the .com crash, and the financial crash, especially the latter, where we can see that the greatest superstars in the square mile "didn't see it coming", and where during the crash, people saw their investments halve and funds were locked down and people couldn't remove their money...

then speaking only for myself, I would rather lose my money myself than somebody do it for me

In my opinion, history has proven over the generations, in the long run, property, land, houses, apartments is the best underlying foundation of a pension plan and basically, whatever your total wealth, put the highest percentage into the safest investments and the lowest percentage into the riskiest investments

Good luck

Milan.

[alreadypacked]

I'm 43, back in 2010 I started wondering about retirement, and this is my suggestion for you all

. before you "just start" doing some kind of pension savings, the first thing you need to do, is,...

you need to know what size pot you need to retire on

how to calculate what size pot you need to retire on ?

crudely speaking, and this is what I did in 2010, just take a sheet of paper, or an excel, and consider, at today's values, what will it cost you per month in any given year to live the kind of life you want to live when you retire, so I did it like this... per month

Gas Heating bill

Electricity bill

Food bill

Clothes and footwear

Winter holiday

Summer holiday

Weekends away

Fun/Going Out

Petrol/Diesel

Running a car (mot consumables brakes servicing etc)

Owning a car, discounting the cost of a car over 5 years (you need to estimate what kind of wheels you want to be running around in)

Council Tax

etc etc


So on an Excel or sheet of A4, list all of these items on the left,

make a column for months and estimate what each costs per month

then make a column for year and at the bottom write the total of all of these for the year

then, and this is the useful bit, analytics, make a column % of yearly total and for each item
list in it's row in the percentage of yearly total column what this item's percentage of the yearly
total is

you'll then be able to see, from the yearly total, what the % of each item is, and then you can see
the essentials like heating and food, which don't have much room for manouvre, and the less essentials
like the car, and you can play with the numbers, what if I had a cheap car compared to an expensive one etc

once you have played with the numbers and come with a lifestyle standard of living you will be happy to have in your
retirement, then you will know from this sheet of A4, how much $$$ you need per year to live on, let's say for sake of argument in today's money it's 20k gbp per year

Once you know how much you need per live on per year, then you can estimate based upon your ancestor's life expectancy, to what age generally people in your family live to, in my family it's into the 90's

so, you know what you need to live on, you know to what age you need to fund that, and now the magic part, when do you want to retire ?

Let's say you want to retire at 55 (where retirement means choosing how you use your time) then you back calculate from 90 to 55, this means for 35 years you need to support yourself at 20k gbp per year, which means...

and this is the magic part, how much do you need to retire ?

you need, 20k gbp * 35 years = 700,000GBP

and now you see your retirement goal, you need a pot of 700,000GBP or you need to build an income mechanism which will bring you 20k gbp per year

of course you need to keep up with inflation

these are the basics that we should all be doing or have done.

I've done it, I know the numbers.


On a personal note, at 43, having grown up in the UK with friend's fathers seeing their company pensions stolen, having lived through the .com crash, and the financial crash, especially the latter, where we can see that the greatest superstars in the square mile "didn't see it coming", and where during the crash, people saw their investments halve and funds were locked down and people couldn't remove their money...

then speaking only for myself, I would rather lose my money myself than somebody do it for me

In my opinion, history has proven over the generations, in the long run, property, land, houses, apartments is the best underlying foundation of a pension plan and basically, whatever your total wealth, put the highest percentage into the safest investments and the lowest percentage into the riskiest investments

Good luck

Milan.

+1

on my way to buying the last property that will give me the retirement income I need.

[kaiser78]

I contribute to my pension every month through my ltd and have been for a while.
However even though the pot is building, I don't think I will build a big enough one to live comfortably in retirement.

I won't get any inheritances to fall back on, unlike most of my friends, nor will the wife, and so I am banking primarily on downsizing my house nearer to retirement and add this to the pension pot. I do have cash and stock ISAs too.

[woohoo]

No pension per say.....

Have thrown a fair amount of money at a commercial property to increase rental income for my folks (2 good sized flats and 1 or 2 commercial sections). Will likely transfer ownership to me after they sell up.

Other than that I'm working serious overtime on a plan B - putting about 20 hours a week into it.

Am just short of your age and have about 120k in equity after debts taken into account. Not the best but not the worst either.

What's plan B or if you can't give specifics general details -just interested, not going to pinch it ?