21st August 2006, 12:04 PM
For those who do not have a pension I have the a few word of advice that I have learned the hard way .
Start contributing to a pension as early as possible in your career. It may only be a small amount but the younger you are when you start contributing the longer it will be invested for.
Do the sums and scare yourself into doing something about it. If you were retiring today and wanted an income of 18k per year from your pension then you would need a pension fund of around 300k to buy an annuity with.
If you are in your early 30s then when you retire in around 25 years time the 18k annual income rises to approximatley 48k through inflation . This means that your pension fund will need to be at least 800k, possibley 1 million quid!.
Now decide how and what you can achieve and do something, no matter how modest to begin with and get all the free adice you can from banks, building societies etc.
One last tip. If you start a private pension wacth out for the charges. The differnece between a 1% and a 1.5 % charge may not seem much but over 25 to 30 years it can mean a huge amount of money.
Magpie.
Start contributing to a pension as early as possible in your career. It may only be a small amount but the younger you are when you start contributing the longer it will be invested for.
Do the sums and scare yourself into doing something about it. If you were retiring today and wanted an income of 18k per year from your pension then you would need a pension fund of around 300k to buy an annuity with.
If you are in your early 30s then when you retire in around 25 years time the 18k annual income rises to approximatley 48k through inflation . This means that your pension fund will need to be at least 800k, possibley 1 million quid!.
Now decide how and what you can achieve and do something, no matter how modest to begin with and get all the free adice you can from banks, building societies etc.
One last tip. If you start a private pension wacth out for the charges. The differnece between a 1% and a 1.5 % charge may not seem much but over 25 to 30 years it can mean a huge amount of money.
Magpie.