My pension pot

kangoora

Wrong question I'm afraid. You need to work out how much YOU need in retirement for the standard of living you require and that will determine how much of a pot you need. If you can't achieve that pot value then you have two choices, save more money for the next 9 years or delay retirement past 67.

As a broad rule of thumb take 4% of your pension pot value as yearly income, so currently say £5k income plus state pension £9k, hence Dunstonh's assessment of £14k/year retirement income. Paying in £200/month = £21.6k in 9 years, so add another £1k to your pot taking your potential income to £15k - or £1,250/month less a bit of tax, call it £1,200/month income (in todays terms). You should also get some growth on your existing pot, lets say £30k after inflation, whch will be about £1.2k after tax, so now up to £16.5k/year. Very, very roughly you are looking at £1.35k/month income after tax in todays terms.

If you currently bring home circa £1.8k/month then you should be ok, if you currently bring home £2.5k then you're going to see a BIG drop in household income (halved).

At your age and level of savings contributing into a pension instead of an ISA looks to be much better, 20% uplift from HMRC into the pension and you will be a lower rate tax payer in retirement.

[Deleted User]

Right now you are spending 10% of your pot. Assume you are not counting pension contributions. Now imagine for a second that your pot halves as soon as you retire. It can, assuming you have a balanced portfolio. Could be worse. At that point you are decimating your pot at the rate of 20% a year. Add emergency expenses. You won’t last very long. You might under some scenarios but the likelihood of failure is unacceptably high. Focus on staying employed.  

stephenadarglas

The point that Mordko makes is critical to the OPs future well being in my opinion. 

garmeg

Thrugelmir said:

garmeg said:

Thrugelmir said:

As an observation, £200 a month saving into the pension fund isn't going to build you a huge pot to draw on. 

It seems to have produced a fund of £120k so far. Could be more than double that at age 67, depending on how invested and maybe use the ISA to fund it. Not a bad place to be.

Doubling in 7 years. That's optimistic. 

9 years (58 to 67) plus the ongoing £200 a month, quite possible.

quanto2009

Deleted_User said:

Right now you are spending 10% of your pot. Assume you are not counting pension contributions. Now imagine for a second that your pot halves as soon as you retire. It can, assuming you have a balanced portfolio. Could be worse. At that point you are decimating your pot at the rate of 20% a year. Add emergency expenses. You won’t last very long. You might under some scenarios but the likelihood of failure is unacceptably high. Focus on staying employed.  

I intend to try keep working just looking at the worst scenerio in current times

dunstonh

quanto2009 said:

Trying to work out to pay more into ISA or pension currently have no big bills or cc so averaging about £1k a month expenses but it's cause it lockdown nowhere to go to spend

Deciding between ISA and pension is fine-tuning but won't fundamentally make that much difference.    Pension will usually marginally beat ISA but ultimately, it is the amount you pay in that matters most.

Your current planning puts you on for around 14k income a year including state pension.   How does that compare with your current income?  Can you afford to live on £14k a year?  if yes, then you are doing fine.  If not, then you need to put aside more.

[Deleted User]

quanto2009 said:

Deleted_User said:

Right now you are spending 10% of your pot. Assume you are not counting pension contributions. Now imagine for a second that your pot halves as soon as you retire. It can, assuming you have a balanced portfolio. Could be worse. At that point you are decimating your pot at the rate of 20% a year. Add emergency expenses. You won’t last very long. You might under some scenarios but the likelihood of failure is unacceptably high. Focus on staying employed.  

I intend to try keep working just looking at the worst scenerio in current times

And if things go wrong you can dip into your pension for a while, just not necessarily for ever.  Look for another employment. Then you’ll be fine.  Every year you spend working is a significant bonus to your safety cushion - and to your future standard of living.

MoneyWorry

I’ve had a few redundancies and we have some similarities. . Happy to share information, “not” so you can compare, but so you can look at approach and see if it helps. 

Age 60 next month
Personal pension £188k  (paying in 87 per month)
DB Pension £2500 pa at 65
AE pension £6k total (paying in 5% a month) 
Total long term savings £17k

The way I do it is to work backwards from state pension age. Reason being if it’s hard at 60 to get a job, it will be 5 times harder at state pension age without even allowing for capability. 
So can I manage at state pension age....with full state pension added to my pensions above I get £18.5k pa above and most importantly comparing to my current take home pay of £1479, I have a resounding yes.
Then I start looking at a year earlier, then another etc etc.
If I was made redundant tomorrow, I would look for a job with similar pay. If things didn’t work out, I would look at doing something with the personal pension and work for minimum wage. I wouldn’t be able to stop completely without taking a hit later on in life. 
As others have said, only you can know how much you want to live on in retirement. It’s very personal. You just have to be aware of not having enough in later years when work will not be an option.