Do you pay into a pension?

Personally I don't intend to buy an annuity at all. But the self-invested stock/bond split pension planners all seem to take 4% of the initial pot size in real terms as a perfectly fine withdrawal rate. Most of those pots have a lot left in them at death and many have a lot more in them than they started with - so a 2-4ppt premium for an annuity isn't unreasonable. Right now of course bonds are paying almost nothing while the stock market is skyrocketting, and annuity companies mostly invest in bonds, which is probably why inflation-adjusted annuities are often providing less than this amount.

I do sympathise with your position though. We don't get to choose (within reason) when we retire, and if you retire when the bond market is doing badly you can end up in a bad position.

Ultimately though I doubt people who earn £10k throughout their lives are going to need to worry. Their standard of living will be low but it will probably be entirely preserved in retirement by transfer payments anyway. It's people in the £20-30k band who I can see dropping suddenly into the £10k on retirement. This reform doesn't totally preserve a £30k income, but from my numbers, even with the returns halved the median income guy is getting £9k/year from the basic private pension, with any additional savings, home ownership, and basic state pensions adding up to something not that far removed.

Personally I don't intend to buy an annuity at all.

Are you one of these people? How do you feel about paying into something you won't be able to access for 40 years? Do you think you pay in enough/too much.. or is the whole thing just something we should ignore until we're in our 40s?

Lets hear your views/questions TSR!

No, most current pensions require you to contribute some of your salary into it.. which the employer then matches