Pension calculator?

kayl

I am 47 and am fighting pension envy!!
I have friends who are employees of banks and the NHS and are looking forward to their final salary penions at 60. I, on the other hand, have contributed a small amount for years to a private pension and am faced with the prospect of retiring on what I fear will be a tiny amount at 68. I started at about age 24 with £25 and increased it by 10% each year - I am presently contributing £175 per month, but in the next few years should be able to add to this significantly.
I was wondering whether there is some tool which I can use to input the amount presently sitting in my pension pot to calculate how much I'd need to add to it to draw down a pension of a certain amount at say age 63?

Tesco_Tom

Try this one; it has lots of options

http://www.hl.co.uk/pensions/interactive-calculators/pension-calculator

Loughton_Monkey

A pension calculator is not really going to help you, other than do a bit of maths that many of us could do on a spreadsheet or bit of paper.

Your fear about survival when you retire is valid, but it's not about whether £175 is good enough or not. It's much, much, more about what you spend. You have, say, 20 years of earnings remaining until you hang up your suit/overalls.....

There are two reasonably solid 'facts'.

1. The current value of your pension pots/savings/investments/house...

2. The value (in today's terms perhaps) of all your future earnings.

In addition, you will be entitled to a State Pension.

Your challenge is to work out "X", where X is the amount of money you can spend on your lifestyle from now on (per week, per month, per year) so that the same lifestyle can be continued after you cease earning.

It is a mathematical fact that those (privileged) people who work for 40 years in a Final Salary Scheme and retire at 60 on 2/3rds of final salary have, in fact, only spent about 75% of their income on 'lifestyle'. This is because it has cost their employer 25% to fund the pension.

So you see that for a 20 year old, "X" is in the order of 75% of earnings throughout working life. Each year that spending exceeds this produces either a shortfall in your pension income, or the need to reduce (to below 75%) the cost of your lifestyle from now on.

Your alternative is simply to continue with a lifestyle that costs almost all of your earnings, which will result in a massive drop, all at once, in lifestyle the minute you retire.