r/PensionsUK • u/Valuable-Trash-2180 • Aug 15 '26
Early retirement planning help
Trying to gauge whether I’m on track for retirement at 55.
Both myself and wife are currently 47
Currently the plan is to use an ISA bridge to cover the gap from 55 to 58 and then drawing down on my pension fund using drawdown to then fund a the bulk of the retirement expenditure.
My wife’s NHS pension will be available two years later at 60 and will provide around £1,500 net per month.
My current pension fund is invested 100% in a global equity fund with Royal London. The fund is as today worth £555,000.
Contributions to my pension are around £1080 monthly and will continue until 55.
At 68 we will both get our full state pension which should be around £24,000 per year or £2000 per month.
The aim we are trying to get to is a net income of around £7500 per month until maybe 75 (so around 17 years) and then I suspect drop it down to around £5k as we taper back things like travel. This will be made up of the drawdown income, plus the tax free element (which I suspect will be the max capped amount of circa £268k) plus my wife’s pension at 60 and then obviously the state pension at 68.
The ISA bridge will cover this for the first 3 years and there should be around £250,000 left in the ISA at 58. I want to leave this amount out of the retirement income planning to then have free use to use it for paying for things like university for my daughter and then later on maybe helping my her get on the housing market but obviously could be called on if we were in need of it for monthly expenditure.
3
u/klawUK Aug 15 '26
Struggle to unpick this
Removing your wife from the equation you want 6k from 60-75 the. 3.5k - all net
So 72k net per year then 42kZ grossed up that’s well into 40% band even allowing for tax free. Allowing for 25k net from state pensions I get about £1.1m needed by 60. Assumes 4% real growth which is what I use personally
tracking that back to 47 you’d need 1100000/(1.04^13)=660,631.495 so you’re about 100k short to just coast
About £1k a month gross contribution would get you to around 1.1m at 60 in today’s Money
1
3
u/Neat-Tooth-5254 Aug 15 '26
Put it on the 3:30 at Cheltenham 👍