Advice for the bewildered

thelchap wrote: »

No - 5% is the max matched I can get, which is why I’ve kept at this level. Any rough idea on how much you’d push this? I’m likely to have a similar standard job long term, but unlikely to get much higher than 70k ish. Cheers

Honestly, I'd suggest putting in 15% of your salary. It's a shame that your employer won't match any more, but that just increases the need for you to be paying a sizeable chunk in.

I'd worry less about reducing your mortgage right now and more about building up an emergency cash fund. Aiming for a value around six months of expenses is a good rule of thumb, although some prefer to hold more with an eye on possible big ticket items like new boilers and "new" cars that might rear their heads as expenses.

Once you have the emergency cash in place, and you have increased your pension contributions (also take the advice about looking at how and where your money is being invested), I'd suggest taking a look at an S&S ISA. Investing should, over the long term, produce better returns than cash savings (although it will be a bumpy ride). If you do look at stocks and shares then I'd advocate giving serious consideration to multi-asset funds like HSBC Global Strategy, Vanguard LifeStrategy, or Blackrock Consensus.

You might want to open a S&S LISA to handle some of your investments, due to the 25% government bonus, but be aware that they stop paying the bonus when you get to 50 and you can't access the investments until you are 60.