34 tomorrow, terrified I'm not on track

LHW99

Thrugelmir said:

mossmanian said:

Originally, I wanted to retire at 55, but that's near impossible now I feel, and as I push towards 60/65, my outlook on how long I may life diminishes rapidly. 

Life is what you make everyday.  You only get one chance.  When investing for the long term the value of your investments is going to gyrate wildly. Just save a reasonable amount every month. Let compounding do the heavy lifting. Towards the end growthbecomes far more rapid. Pension wrapper being the best available at the moment while you are in employment. As others have said don't fixate. Life is a roller coaster. 

Definately this. Make sure you keep contributing, but don't over-worry. I didn't have much of a clue when I was your age, but I kept on paying in (probably less than I should have) but compounding worked, and I've been able to add a bit more in later years when I knew more, and had a bit more spare and find that actually, it'll be OK. Think positive.

JoeCrystal

Happy Birthday! mossmanian.

You are more fortunate than most in your age group. According to more recent ONS statistics, a 35–44 years old person at 75th percentile point with an active occupational defined contribution pension, up to March 2018 would have at least £28k in the scheme.

There is no need to be scared or terrified of this. Every person in the country have to deal with this particular issue, and you are already in a good position as you are more aware of this issue than just sticking your head in the sand like many. You are already contributing £580 per month, which is a good start although I don't see what the percentage of your salary overall is. You need to double-check the contributions from your employer.

Also, you need to find out exactly what kind of income you want to target for your retirement and work backwards but the most important thing is to keep contributing into the pension scheme but as part of overall goals for short term, medium-term and long term financial goals 

LW7

Everyone - thank you for your time and responses, you've certainly put my mind at ease mostly.
I am most definitely going to look into a LISA, because it makes sense. I think I need to spend some time looking at the ways my money is invested currently (over three schemes, from med, med and high risk) to see how they are performing long term against potential other options. As I'm a fair distance from retirement I may decide to moved to a more high risk investment approach for a while, I'll need to research further on that.
A couple of data drops from other posts, I am a basic rate tax payer, £32kPA. I've been lucky that every year since I've been at the company (2002) I've received a payrise of £500+ (gaining more in the latter years as it's based on % not a figure). I have no plans to leave the company, so perhaps in another 10 years, my salary will be higher still meaning higher contributions and more compound interest as a result.

Certainly not at this stage, but in the coming years, my company also offer the ability to put my annual bonus (c£2k-3k) into my pension pot with a £500(ish) bump from them. So as I get older I may utilise this more for that extra bump too.

I will also review my partners pension further and decide what we could live in, minus a mortgage and as you say, work back from there. 

Thank you for all your help and replies, it's great to know I'm not in as a bad situation as I thought I was. 

All the best. 

g002ahe

kinger101 said:

Running those numbers on my python script

Kinger101, can you share that script with me/us? I intend to create one myself when I have time but having a starting point would accelerate me! maybe adding a small ui etc and possibly open sourcing.