A £500k pension pot

which I assume is a lot larger than the average worker can hope for, entitles you to an annuity of around £20k a year. That doesn't seem all that much.

Does this worry you, or are you hoping to have such an inexpensive lifestyle by that point that it will be largely irrelevant?

If you accept that you shouldn't have a higher standard of living in retirement than in work, you need to look at your current netnet and then take away mortgage costs, investment and savings contributions, commuting costs, other work costs and see what's left. If you earn a vaguely high salary, you pay a shedload of tax. In retirement, you should hardly pay any. Also if you have chidren then them leaving home is like a massive pay rise in itself.

 

Monthly expenses of £3.5k mortgage, £1k pension (probably less if just aiming for £500k), £2.5k school fees, £400 season ticket all of which will stop in retirement.

Even ignoring the state pension that £20k has gotta be £2k per month in my pocket?

So thats the same actual useable money in retirement as I have earning £9.4k now or about £205k a year?

I haven't looked into what happens to my pension if I die first

If you're properly planning for things its worth looking at as it can vary massively.  Pretty sure I keep my wife's pot, get a lump sum and then a spouse's pension too.  Some times though I think the entitlement in the fund is used to pay the lump sum and / or spouse's pension.

Who works these numbers out? I mean who the fook would accept 4% as an acceptable annual income return on an investment? Should be looking for at least 10%.

Like Bam, I have tried time and again to understand this subject but, despite being quite a clever bunny, I just can’t.

I just do what st. james’s Place tell me

Love ??? suggestion.  Given that when I qualified I was on £40 something grand gross it would have been a struggle to tuck away £16k a year.  In fact even now I'm not putting that much into my pension.

Lol, the only 10% you'll get from SJP is in charges, not returns.

Pensions are really simple - it's just a tax wrapper for investments that you can't get at until you are wrinkly. Pensions don't do badly or well, the underlying investments do.

Yes all true AWU, if you pretend that most of your investment growth is not eaten by charges and they fooked in the ass when you cash it in with a shitty annuity at the end. 

 

 

pensions are not “really simple FGS. I have no idea:

- what the tax benefits of paying into a pension are

- how much I’m allowed to pay in, total or per year

- when I can start drawing

- what tax I have to pay on income or capital withdrawals or even how the difference between the two is defined

I know that one year I accidentally paid in slightly more than I was supposed to, to one of my schemes. So far as I can see there have never been any adverse consequences to this.

all washed up26 Nov 19 13:31

Pensions are really simple

 

Cookie, you're either:

1. a genius with no empathy for mere mortals like us who struggle to understand the complexities of a notoriously difficult discipline; or

2. a simpleton who is missing the salient points

I shall let others form their own opinions.

What ITFT said. Invest in creating something that generates a living income without needing you to work, and accept you’ll pay tax on the income, just as you do on your income now. If a pension is the best way of doing that then fine, but - when I’ve made the effort to engage with the subject - I’ve generally tended to the wibble view that a pension probably isn’t the best way, over and above the level required to max out your employer’s matches contribution.

 

eg

The two investment properties my wife and I own already generate an income of three and a half grand a month, most of which currently goes towards paying down repayment mortgages at the mo, but most of which will eventually be pure income. Yeah we’ll pay tax on it but worrevah, we pay tax on our salaries. The income from those two fairly modest properties is likely to massive exceed anything a pension ever pays out.

I'd be amazed if a highly paid City lawyer could not learn everything they needed to know about pensions in half an hour of browsing Hargreaves Lansdown or moneysavingexpert.

Pensions are really an equities vehicle so if you don't like or get shares or funds of shares, then it's probably not for you. BTL has been good historically but that's mainly down to leverage so it's not a straight comparison at all. On a fully funded basis most BTL currently makes no sense at all - low yield, high tax at every stage of the investment cycle, high ongoing costs, concentration risk etc. But people like something they can touch and I can get with that. I do wonder how many actually work out the real costs and therefore real return however.

My various pension pots are at about £500k now on a good day and I think I have put in £22k of my own money. I don't think that's too bad.

For moment I thought Laz's BTL empire was only earning £3,500 a year although conceivable if it's up north.

AWU there are also so many landlords who don't seem to realise that the additional rent you get from changing tenants every year is probably less than the cost of agent's fees, voids between tenants and the cost of redecorating between the tenants.  You're often better off leaving the same tenant in situ for several years.

Of course what you have to remember this is laz and therefore has to be taken advisedly.

One very strongly suspects that one of these ‘investment properties’ is his old house up north London way that he is renting out until he returns to do another stint in a London law firm at or around the time his first child starts primary school.