Tm's MFW ramblings

turtlemoose

Is there an "idiots guide to pensions" knocking about somewhere?!

I'm 40, earning 33k gross, contributing 5%, employer 10%, sal sac. Cannot afford to increase this. Have 4 pensions - prev employer 1, prev employer 2, SIPP, current employer. Total of all of them is £111k. After looking at some pension calculators, it seems not enough, unless i work until im about to die anyway. Eek.

Im concerned this means i should have been focussing on my pension instead of my mortgage. Or, is it best to get rid of the mortgage  (worst case scenario 15 years left), then use the freed up mortgage payment to bump up the pension /savings at that point? 

Feel like I've been missing a crucial part of the puzzle!

edinburgher

Have you looked at these?

https://www.retirementlivingstandards.org.uk/

turtlemoose

edinburgher said:

Have you looked at these?

https://www.retirementlivingstandards.org.uk/

Thanks Ed. I've no issue working out what my solo living expenses would be (using today's money). To be comfortable ( more comfortable than I am now!), I reckon £1800 pm (kids grown up and no mortgage), so £21.6k per year. Let's round it to 22k, net. 

I think maybe I'm overthinking it / not thinking about it at the right time.  I'm going to focus on the mortgage and the credit cards, and come back to the pension topic in say 6 months

turtlemoose

Time for a finances snapshot I think...I can come back to this and it'll remind me to stay on track and not do any frivolous spending. 

0% CC balances £2962
Charger install     £1195
Total:                     £4157

Predicted income before the end of this year (outside of salary)... £2800 car, £700 leftover car maintenance pot, the 13th CB payment £170 - that's £3670 ... I talked about stoozing earlier but forgot I can't actually do this much because of DWP capital rules, so will pay all directly off the CCs immediately. The remaining balance I will keep ticking over and pay £25 a month until the 0% runs out (to help my credit score stay consistent). 

If i do this, it sees me going in to 2026 with only £25pm deliberate CC debt, and nothing else except the mortgage. My fixed saver where I am offsetting mortgage ops right now matures in Jan, that'll be 3k + interest that will hit as an OP just at the right time for my fix ending/new deal hunting. This should hopefully keep my mortgage payments at (or within +£40) of what I'm paying now, despite an inevitable % jump. 

Without any debt to service, I can spend £1300 on a family holiday, £2000 on home improvements (including patio and fence mentioned before, and some carpet that is threadbare), and add £650 to savings. It'll be a year off from making mortgage OPs to do that though. But I think I can't scrape by to the penny on everything all of the time, we need to enjoy some stuff now, not always save for later. 

Of course still holding out for that lotto jackpot win to make all of this irrelevant