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Hmm you're probably right - I didn't consider sustained low interest rates. The decline started long before rates came down but I've no idea how 30+ years of d

Hmm you're probably right - I didn't consider sustained low interest rates. The decline started long before rates came down but I've no idea how 30+ years of differently funded schemes would look (ie without the funding changes). That's a lot of compound interest. > let's not forget Gordon Brown Oh he gets no free pass on pensions - he raided them for billions. My personal pension has performed disastrously from 2 bad years it'll probably never recover properly from. There went my early retirement thoughts. My parent's generation retirement options look pretty good.

Ntrails 10y ago
We're probably still understating the deficits by assuming interest rates will increase soon™ - and yet the deficits are somewhere in the region of 1.5 times GDP in the UK[1]. It's terrifying I empathise with you on the personal pension - but that's the reality of risk/reward investments. I'd have thought a lot of the bad performance should have recovered based on current markets? Depending on your age the solution is usually to: -Contribute more -Risk on (aiming for higher rewards) -Work longer. I think it's really really important to recognise that early retirement probably means finishing work ~65 years old if you want a comparable "lifetime in retirement" to earlier generations who retired at 55. One simply cannot expect to spend 25 years in full retirement after only working 25 years. I think as a society we've got to make some huge adjustments in expectations, because we're stuck in a mindset from 70 years ago that isn't really viable. Personally I expect to aim to retire "early" into a different role that is less stressful and in the countryside - but I don't intend to stop working until much later. [1] I haven't seen updated numbers in a few years, maybe it's better now..

Ntrails 10y ago

We're probably still understating the deficits by assuming interest rates will increase soon™ - and yet the deficits are somewhere in the region of 1.5 times GDP in the UK[1]. It's terrifying I empathise with you on the personal pension - but that's the reality of risk/reward investments. I'd have thought a lot of the bad performance should have recovered based on current markets? Depending on your age the solution is usually to: -Contribute more -Risk on (aiming for higher rewards) -Work longer. I think it's really really important to recognise that early retirement probably means finishing work ~65 years old if you want a comparable "lifetime in retirement" to earlier generations who retired at 55. One simply cannot expect to spend 25 years in full retirement after only working 25 years. I think as a society we've got to make some huge adjustments in expectations, because we're stuck in a mindset from 70 years ago that isn't really viable. Personally I expect to aim to retire "early" into a different role that is less stressful and in the countryside - but I don't intend to stop working until much later. [1] I haven't seen updated numbers in a few years, maybe it's better now..