Success Stories - Pensions

Markdavid1962

Great idea to do this as its also a good counter check to see if any other funds perform better

My situation, I started paying in to my pension funds in 2001 at age 39 as I had just returned from working overseas for 17 years, so had limited state pension contributions (age 17 to 20)

I paid in as much as possible and looked at the funds which performed. Eventually using pay increases to increase the percentage I paid in to the maximum. Its always a balancing act on paying in to pension or off the mortgage.

My goal was to retire at 60 and own my own home, which I achieved.

Today (age 62) I have four pension pots including a Private SIPP which I have kept seperate (not consolidated), I have taken the 25% tax free element which I used to pay the UK house off and also to purchase a Spanish holiday house.

I have tracked the pension pots performance monthly for over 7 years (on current spreadsheet) and have compared performance monthly and annually.  

The one thing I did do before the Brexit referendum is I converted all pensions to cash as I was concerned about risk and then repurchased a few days after when the market started to recover (making a gain on the amount of shares)

Pot Values 

2015 £130k
2016 £179k
2017 £230k (age 55)
2018 £233k  (after taking 25% from 2 pots)
2019 £264k
2020 £280k
2021 £383k
2022  £430k
2023 £393k (after taking 25% from SIPP)
2024 £435k

I have no debt and live off income of around £35k today, £25k withdrawal per annum from Pension, plus interest from investments, (not taking capital) this year overall growth was £45k across the 4 pension pots.

pterri

Markdavid1962 said:

Great idea to do this as its also a good counter check to see if any other funds perform better

My situation, I started paying in to my pension funds in 2001 at age 39 as I had just returned from working overseas for 17 years, so had limited state pension contributions (age 17 to 20)

I paid in as much as possible and looked at the funds which performed. Eventually using pay increases to increase the percentage I paid in to the maximum. Its always a balancing act on paying in to pension or off the mortgage.

My goal was to retire at 60 and own my own home, which I achieved.

Today (age 62) I have four pension pots including a Private SIPP which I have kept seperate (not consolidated), I have taken the 25% tax free element which I used to pay the UK house off and also to purchase a Spanish holiday house.

I have tracked the pension pots performance monthly for over 7 years (on current spreadsheet) and have compared performance monthly and annually.  

The one thing I did do before the Brexit referendum is I converted all pensions to cash as I was concerned about risk and then repurchased a few days after when the market started to recover (making a gain on the amount of shares)

Pot Values 

2015 £130k
2016 £179k
2017 £230k (age 55)
2018 £233k  (after taking 25% from 2 pots)
2019 £264k
2020 £280k
2021 £383k
2022  £430k
2023 £393k (after taking 25% from SIPP)
2024 £435k

I have no debt and live off income of around £35k today, £25k withdrawal per annum from Pension, plus interest from investments, (not taking capital) this year overall growth was £45k across the 4 pension pots.

Amazing, one more year for me! Less actually, end of July 2025. I’ll be living of SIPP and ISA until 60 when I can access my DB then it’s plain sailing I think. Full SP at 67

crv1963

I haven't posted for some years!

I had a period of ill health seven years ago which meant I had time to take a long and hard look at my and my wifes pensions/ savings/ aims. I read through several of the threads and asked lots of seemingly basic questions, my mantra is and always has been "there's no such thing as a stupid question, only the stupid don't question!"

I took my DB NHS Pension at the start of Covid and due to Covid changes in regulations I returned back to the NHS in the same roll and terms and conditions of employment, I was enrolled in the NEST scheme as regulations at the time prevented me rejoining the NHS Pension scheme. Since then I have been able to rejoin the scheme as the regulations changed last year. I am in the process of buying additional pension for two reasons- 1) it increases the survivors pension should I die first and 2) reduces the amount of higher rate tax I currently pay.

Since going through my planning seven years ago we have ploughed as much as we can into my wifes pension- employer NEST and we opened a SIPP for her. Wife has another SERPs Pension Pot which we are planning on taking the 25% TFLS from this year but not drawing the pension down yet. The SERPs pension was something my wife contributed to in her 20s, probably around 5-8k which has grown with no effort from her to around 90k.

Things that I have learnt:- 
1) Time in the market is the best way of growing your money.
2) If have access to a DB scheme don't hesitate joining it.
3) Pension planning for a couple is a joint venture, hence prioritising wife SIPP despite from a tax view point loading my SIPP makes the most sense.
4) Knowing you have enough to retire on is a real bonus, I love what I do for a living and plan on doing for a few more years health permitting, but I also know that if I wanted to I could simply give notice and go. Likewise for my wife, she is planning on carrying on for a few years yet, but the knowledge she could go now is an important safety blanket.
5) It's never too late to plan and save it just takes a bit more effort!
6) Sharing is important, for us as a couple so we both have a decent retirement income, and knowledge with the next generation too, my sons both are saving a decent percentage into their pensions, which they learnt  about while I was doing my research.
7) Have a rough idea of the retirement income you want and aim for it, be prepared to compromise either the amount or the length of time to save it or both.

LL_USS

I think I've done okay so far for my pension, though it could be much better if I try to do more for it. Snagnant career due to family circunstances, including more-difficult-than-avergage child care and being the only bread winner (and everything-doer ) of the household. I still have about 20 more years' work and if i work out my pension pot as DB*23+DC then it is shy of 320K at the moment. Mortgage paid off (when the rate started to go crazy), and some ISAs/ LISAs.

Like many of us here I have tried to balance between investing (in my case working on my own house to keep moving up to now a great one in a great area), overpaying/ paying off mortgage, pension contribution, and cash aside to help children (perhaps a big sum in the next couple of years). When the high charge child benefit was from 50K I always tried to make sure my after-pension-contribution income was less than this amount (my salary was average and still, but I have some other incomes that push the number up). Even now when the charge starts at at any parent's income of 60K, I still keep taxable income of under the 40% tax band threshold of £50,270, by putting the surplus into DC.

I still have not looked into the folowing to see how to boost the pension pot and savings:
- SIPP (I am in USS defined benefit scheme which I think is okay already, need to know the benefit of having a SIPP at the side - perhaps not applicable in my case but I still want to know)

- choosing investing options for my DC pot in my pension (the current option is investing all but medium risk and let the scheme manage - I started my DC from 2017, university and myself putting in about 38.5K so far and the DC pot currently is worth about 43K, don't know whether it's good investment or not).

- Move ISAs/ LISAs to S&S types - mine are still all in cash. Perhaps I keep them in cash for 2-3 more years until I know whether I need to use them or not (LISA to be taken out with a helfty penalty of course). If when helping kids I liquidise an asset then no need to use the ISAs (or even LISAs); but if I need to jump at a chance quickly to buy then I wouldn't have enough time to sell. A couple of more years keeping the ISAs flexible then I suppose.

Definitely I will push the kids to look into pension building for themselves as soon as they have a job.

barnstar2077

LL_USS said:

I think I've done okay so far for my pension, though it could be much better if I try to do more for it. Stagnant career due to family circumstances, including more-difficult-than-average child care and being the only bread winner (and everything-doer ) of the household. I still have about 20 more years' work and if i work out my pension pot as DB*23+DC then it is shy of 320K at the moment. Mortgage paid off (when the rate started to go crazy), and some ISAs/ LISAs.

Like many of us here I have tried to balance between investing (in my case working on my own house to keep moving up to now a great one in a great area), paying/ paying off mortgage, pension contribution, and cash aside to help children (perhaps a big sum in the next couple of years). When the high charge child benefit was from 50K I always tried to make sure my after-pension-contribution income was less than this amount (my salary was average and still, but I have some other incomes that push the number up). Even now when the charge starts at at any parent's income of 60K, I still keep taxable income of under the 40% tax band threshold of £50,270, by putting the surplus into DC.

I still have not looked into the following to see how to boost the pension pot and savings:

- SIPP (I am in USS defined benefit scheme which I think is okay already, need to know the benefit of having a SIPP at the side - perhaps not applicable in my case but I still want to know)

- Choosing investing options for my DC pot in my pension (the current option is investing all but medium risk and let the scheme manage - I started my DC from 2017, university and myself putting in about 38.5K so far and the DC pot currently is worth about 43K, don't know whether it's good investment or not).

- Move ISAs/ LISAs to S&S types - mine are still all in cash. Perhaps I keep them in cash for 2-3 more years until I know whether I need to use them or not (LISA to be taken out with a hefty penalty of course). If when helping kids I liquidise an asset then no need to use the ISAs (or even LISAs); but if I need to jump at a chance quickly to buy then I wouldn't have enough time to sell. A couple of more years keeping the ISAs flexible then I suppose.

Definitely I will push the kids to look into pension building for themselves as soon as they have a job.

I would say that with 20 years to go you should be in higher risk, higher volatility funds for your DC pot (and S&S ISA depending on when you need it.)  Put everything in a globally diversified, at least 80% equities, fund and keep adding to it.  And most importantly, don't worry if it goes down a bit.  It will go up and down, just keep putting money in and don't worry about it until you are five to ten years away from retirement (or will need the money from the ISA.)  

crv1963

LL_USS said:

Definitely I will push the kids to look into pension building for themselves as soon as they have a job.

You may find that you don't have to do much pushing. My sons were just starting their careers when I was looking at mine and my wifes pension provision/ planning and both asked a few questions of me about it and then when they started work joined and added a percentage more to their works pensions, both independently opened a LISA  and I know my oldest son saves very hard and my youngest (age 27) has 12% of salary going into his pension so employer matches, which is the maximum he can get.

My ex-wife and I were always open about finances such as pensions and savings with them and encouraged them to save for things that they wanted, such as laptops and phones so they realised nothing is simply going to appear in their lap.

LL_USS

barnstar2077 said:

I would say that with 20 years to go you should be in higher risk, higher volatility funds for your DC pot (and S&S ISA depending on when you need it.)  Put everything in a globally diversified, at least 80% equities, fund and keep adding to it.  And most importantly, don't worry if it goes down a bit.  It will go up and down, just keep putting money in and don't worry about it until you are five to ten years away from retirement (or will need the money from the ISA.)  

Hello again here barnstar2077, and good advice for me again, thank you

I will work out how to request this investment strategy for my DC pot. I have saved your note to be used when I work out how to do it. For my LISAs I am just thinking how it went through a period of 1% saving interest rate and then boom 12% inflation. Oh well. We live and learn. Yes I will try to confirm whether I need the ISAs soon otherwise they will follow the same with DC. Thanks again @barnstar2077.

Cobbler_tone

Not sure it is a success story but I managed to keep my pension post divorce...little else, but that was my motivation!

In 2019 my DB pot was valued at £670k...this year it is £420k, which was similar to last year so I want this to pick up a bit. This scheme was closed in 2021.
With bonuses, a small transfer and increasing contributions I have £85k in my active DC pension and contributing around £24k per year.

The conundrum I have is that I want to retire ASAP, I'm 55, don't own a property, although have a stable fiance I live with who is mortgage free. The DB scheme doesn't pay enough to retire now, so I could cash in and waiting for an imminent bridging option to be introduced.
 
The one thing I see time and time again is that in those last 10 years+ of life you don't actually spend much.
We can all fall into that trap of trying to build and build for our future, when in fact we have enough to enjoy those later years. 

MallyGirl

Cobbler_tone said:

Not sure it is a success story but I managed to keep my pension post divorce...little else, but that was my motivation!

In 2019 my DB pot was valued at £670k...this year it is £420k, which was similar to last year so I want this to pick up a bit. This scheme was closed in 2021.
With bonuses, a small transfer and increasing contributions I have £85k in my active DC pension and contributing around £24k per year.

The conundrum I have is that I want to retire ASAP, I'm 55, don't own a property, although have a stable fiance I live with who is mortgage free. The DB scheme doesn't pay enough to retire now, so I could cash in and waiting for an imminent bridging option to be introduced.
 
The one thing I see time and time again is that in those last 10 years+ of life you don't actually spend much.
We can all fall into that trap of trying to build and build for our future, when in fact we have enough to enjoy those later years. 

transfer values have come down a lot.
what do you mean by 'cash in'?
You might not spend much in your last 10 years - or you might need to fund significant care

LHW99

I hope you are not suggesting that at close to 55, you expecting to be approaching "those last 10 years+ of life" .

I am (too) well beyond that age, and hope to have at least that left to me, and have actually been able to spend rather more pa at this age than I was able to at 55+ (combination of factors adding up).