How do you calculate whether you have enough pension

There are a number of steps you need to complete before you can calculate whether or not pension will be enough:

1. You know the pensions you have and what their value is
2. Age you want to retire
3. Likely costs per year then you can see how much your pot needs to be.

One consideration we can not factor in, is how long we will live. Unless we have some medical knowledge to the contrary we should estimate a long life and, if cautious, one beyond the average current mortality rate.

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Illustrated below are the different scenarios based on changing the year you will retire and whether you have a final salary pension or not.

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if your desired yearly pension was £25,000 according to Pension living standards association that is a moderate living wage when you retire.

If you want to retire at 65, have a full state pension and need £25,000 a year to live on you will need £220,000 in your pension pot.*

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*assumes a life expectancy of 85 and a yearly outgoings of £25,000
** assumes you will get the full state pension, 35 years of national insurance paid

If you know what your desired income is or you want to see different illustrations do this by adding your own figures in this google spreadsheet Pension forecast.‍

You need to copy the Google spreadsheet, rename it and then can edit it using the red input boxes. The figures can be changed, but do not change the formulas otherwise the calculations will be wrong.