Keep calm and carry on....

V8D

Sounds like you're really switched on to achieving your goals.

Regarding pensions, I have sporadically paid into one over the years though hardly enough to make any sort of difference. My husband doesn't work so he will only get the state pension and if I'm honest I can't see me giving up the business. I'd like to get to the point where I'm overseeing, there are some associated investments and that will be our pension. I'm one of those people who can't imagine not working at all. 😜

Grogged

Being recently stung by the non returns on ex work place pensions I've split my pension planning into 3 parts.
The first is current work place scheme that I just pay the standard amount towards.
The second is a SIPP that holds all my ex work place pensions (bear in mind I've never had a final salary scheme). I also top this up as and when.
The third is a S&S ISA, which doubles as long term savings. I'm hoping to use this as my lump sum pot of needed.
This seems to work for me anyhow.

savingholmes

I am lucky I have a career average pension in current role and a final salary pension from another one that I am trying to transfer into a sipp and another tiny pension. DH only has defined contribution pensions and I hate to think what's happened to that one. If we both work to age 55 we should have accrued enough for full state pension from age 67. One the final salary pension is in a sipp it will be more accessible - and we could potentially use to help pay down the mortgage or some kind of flexible drawdown. But that assumes I still get offered decent money to transfer it out... currently in the process of getting another quote...

South_coast

Thanks all. I must admit V8D, I hadn't really considered that I could carry on working! I think my brain is so fixated on the type of work I do now, that the concept of a different type of job seems a bit alien! It looks as though my state pension will be £175/week in today's money (although I currently have to wait until 68 to get it 😮), which would be equivalent to working 20 hours/week at the national living wage. I think I could manage to work part-time like that for the period between being able to access private pensions and getting the state pension. This also works out to be pretty well exactly the £750/month that I need for the "sling it in the pot" bills method, so private pensions need to be enough to pay for the extras like eating (!), petrol, holidays, gifts etc rather than also having to cover living costs. Put like that, it doesn't sound *quite* so daunting. 

Inspired by Grogged, I've also decided to start paying into my S&S ISA again (I stopped a couple of years ago so I could go full-speed on the mortgage). I'm going to start modestly with £40/month for now, but there's already just over £4k in there and I like the fact that I can access it whenever I should need to. Just waiting on a pin reset to come in the post so I can access it online. I like the idea of having various different stashes of money dotted about which then gives me the freedom to do different things with each, and is why I've always kept my old work pension seperate from the current one. 

That'll do for now. I came home from the shops via BF's earlier, so have now got some wine and it's cheese and biscuit (and wine) time for me! 

South_coast

Oh, in other exciting news (exciting in the sense that it's completely irrelevant 😂): If I were to maintain my current weekly average mileage I wouldn't need to buy petrol again for....a year 😂! That's much more palatable than my usual at-least-once-a-week 😀!

savingholmes

Glad you are starting to explore alternatives. We would quite like to semi-retire at 55 but we still plan to earn money but potentially in a different way. We would love to live in the country - and I think this crisis has demonstrated that a lot more people can work from home ie location independent than has been believed for years. I still would want to go in the office a day or two a week though for some social...

shangaijimmy

Have a look at a comound interest calculator. If you set to 5% return and play around with the number of years and the amounts needed it'll give you an idea of how much to pay etc... Massive help to me in formulating a plan, but I did spend a good amount of time thinking on things.

For what its worth Mrs SJ has a final salary scheme and she pays some money into her AVC to boost her lump sum. I have a workplace DC pension with fairly miserly 3% off work contributed. I utilse salary sacrifice to take the tax & NI benefits. Unfortunately the fees are quite high at 0.8% (sounds low but think about the compounding effect of fees in the same way as compounding effect on growth or interest in a mortgage), and the investment options are disappointing. So once a year I transfer the balance from workplace pension to my SIPP (no fees for transfer and I can send 95% of balance). Unfortunately work won't pay directly into my SIPP, but all it takes is 5mins of an online form once a year to action the partial transfer. Fees in my SIPP are 0.15%. My 'plan' is to build the pension pot to be able to have the option to fully retire at 60. I then put some cash each month into a S&S Isa and am using this as a pot of money to enable me to go part time from 55. Thats the plan, but I accept that life will get in the way and this pot may well be needed for something else (I have planned for 3 yrs of uni per child but if one picks to be a vet or doctor then I have this ISA pot as a back up!)!

South_coast

Ohhh, now you've made my head spin again just when I thought I had a plan 😦 (probably not a very good plan, but it was a plan all the same). I used the calculator on the Money Advice Service website - I'm assuming that works the same way? 

In other news, if anyone does Shop & Scan, they've massively increased the range of e-gift cards available so would be worth having a look if you're sitting on points because they're not doing paper vouchers. 

In other other news, it's wage slip day 😢 Not as exciting an event as normal 😢

themadvix

Oh thanks for the heads up about shop and scan. Will have a look. Our preferred option was leisure vouchers for restaurant pleasure... but seems we can have neither these days... just hope Whitbread survives so we can use the £40-odd I ordered in Feb. 

South_coast

I know, I've got £10 that I'd ordered as the start of some meals for my road trip (which I'm now not going on)!