More than one in ten people over State Pension age in the UK are still working — and the number has climbed steadily over the past decade. Between July 2023 and June 2024, roughly 1.12 million people aged 66 and older remained in paid work, up from 880,000 a decade earlier. That 9.5% figure sounds modest until you consider what
More than a million UK State Pension recipients now live outside the country, and a growing slice of that number aren’t heading for a villa in Spain or a condo in Portugal — they’re moving onto boats. Whether it’s a narrowboat on the canals, a Dutch barge on the Thames, or a converted tug moored on the coast, the liveaboard
From April 2027, any money left in a defined contribution pension after death will be included in your estate for inheritance tax purposes. For someone with a £200,000 pension pot and a home worth £350,000, that could mean an extra £80,000 tax bill that wouldn’t have existed under the old rules. Disclosure: Some links on this page are affiliate links.
More UK employees than ever are saving into a workplace pension — 82% of the workforce, the highest figure since records began. Yet 43% of working-age people, roughly 14.6 million, are still on track to fall short of a minimum retirement income. That gap between the headline success story and what most people will actually have to live on is
Nearly 2.8 million people in the UK who had already retired have since returned to work. That is roughly 11% of everyone over 50. For someone who thought their working days were behind them, this means rethinking what retirement actually looks like — and whether their savings will hold up over two or three extra decades. Disclosure: Some links on
Nearly 991,000 people aged 60 and over were self-employed in the UK in 2023 — a record number. That’s roughly the population of Southampton, all running their own businesses after traditional retirement age. For someone at 65 with a £150,000 pension pot, that extra £5,000–£10,000 a year from a small venture can mean the difference between watching every penny and
Taking your pension at 55 sounds like freedom. But the numbers tell a different story. The average UK pension pot sits at £91,000, according to The Investing and Saving Alliance. If you retire at 55 and take £10,000 a year from that pot, it runs out before you reach State Pension age — at 64. That leaves you with nothing
More than two-thirds of UK pensioners say they would rather turn off their heating than fall into energy debt, according to Age UK polling of people aged 66 and over. That’s 8.3 million older adults choosing cold over debt — a figure that has climbed sharply since the Winter Fuel Payment was means-tested in 2024 and energy bills settled at
Fifteen million working-age adults in the UK do not save enough for retirement, and without urgent action that number could climb to 19 million, according to the Pensions Commission. That is not a distant problem. It means roughly one in three working-age people today will reach retirement age with little more than the State Pension to live on — and
Google searches for “downsizing” have jumped 450 per cent over the past five years, and roughly 6.3 million UK homeowners are now actively considering or planning to move to a smaller property. That figure comes from Suffolk Building Society research and it points to something bigger than a passing trend. What the data actually shows is that many retirees are
Most retirement planning assumes your housing costs disappear once you stop working. The mortgage is paid off, the roof is yours, and your pension only needs to cover food, bills, and the occasional holiday. But that picture doesn’t match what’s happening on the ground. According to the English Housing Survey, just 6% of households headed by someone over 65 are
Women in the UK retire with pension pots that are on average 35% smaller than men’s, according to research from Pension Helper. That gap is not random. It reflects career breaks, part-time work, and the fact that many couples never build a deliberate pension strategy together. But a growing number of UK couples are doing the opposite of what sounds
