Do you save for retirement as well?

angelavdavis

I stopped paying into my pension for four years while I initially cleared my debt (I couldn't afford to pay into a pension because my debts repayments cleared out my salary), then when I overpaid my mortgage.

However, having switched jobs and gone freelance to earn my maximum possible salary, I threw all my money at the mortgage I could and so never planned to stop paying the pension for more than five years. I have existing pensions which just carried on without me adding to them during this time.

As has been said, you really should seek advice.

belfastgirl23

I have a final salary pension scheme and am funding to retire at 60 so making an additional 4% or thereabouts contribution. Taxwise this is efficient for me which is one of the reasons for not just using this money to OP on the mortgage (also my employer contributes fairly handsomely too which is another incentive).

But DH is self employed and he is throwing money into the mortgage rather than any penion provison even though I have explained to him that this isn't sensible...

Kaz2904

I have an NHS final salary pension which I pay about 5% of my salary towards. DH has no pension provision. Conversely my kids do have pensions started when they were 2 and 4.
Our planning for retirement involves my penson, no mortgage and a savings pot which we will grow when debt free. I looked at the compound interest calculators etc and we worked out that DH would have to pay so much towards his pension because he was 28 that we would be repaying the mortgage forever more!
I hope we're ding the right thing though. Time will tell but at least we will be making some provision towards our retirement.
Of course the worry is now that the government wants to devalue the pound by printing loads more (not sure how that works as I rarely use cash). So even if you have a huge pot it could be virtually worthless. That's my limited understanding of it at present. Just hope we'll be ok.

Jasper27_2

I'm hoping to be mortgage free in about 3 years, I'll only be 43 so I intend to save some cash every month for retirement. I started pension when I was 18 and joined civil service, basically because I didn't uunderstand what I was doing and opting out seemed too complicated! It turned out to be a good move as it's a good pension and I started young. I'd go with clearing your debts first then trying to strike a balance between clearing the mortgage and building a pension pot. I think we all tend to forget that the longer you leave it the more you need to save so it's better to start as soon as you can.

ameldridge

LGPS for me, I pay 6.8% and a 19.3% contribution from my Employer which is nice of them

The earlier you start paying the better in the longterm.

Seek advice though