Most people don’t know how much money they’ll have when they stop working.
It’s normal. Pensions are dull, the answer feels a long way off, and there is always something more pressing to do.
September 15-16 is Pension Awareness Day. It is as good a reason as any to finally sit down and sort this out.
It takes about an hour, you don’t need to be good with numbers, and you don’t need to understand pensions yet. You just need to write down what you’ve got.
Why bother writing it down?
This is a way of seeing where you stand. It is not financial advice, and it is not a substitute for it.
There are apps and websites that will do some of this for you. Some of them are good, but they only know about the pension you tell them about.
If you have three old pensions sitting somewhere you have forgotten about, an app will not go and find them. You have to do that bit.
A blank retirement planning spreadsheet is annoying in a useful way. It stays empty until you go and get the numbers, but going and getting the numbers is the whole point.
It also costs nothing and nobody is trying to sell you anything at the end of it.
What do you put in it?
1. Every pension you have ever had
Write one line for each one. For each pension, put down:
- Who it is with
- Your policy or member number
- What it is worth now
- What you pay in each month, and what your employer pays in
- The date you last looked at it
Write down every job you’ve ever had. Six jobs often means six pensions, and most people forget at least one.
If you know you had a pension somewhere but cannot remember who with, the government runs a free Pension Tracing Service. It will tell you who to ring.
2. Your State Pension
The GOV.UK website has a State Pension forecast tool. It is free to use and takes about five minutes.
This will tell you two things.
- An estimate of your State Pension based on your existing contributions.
- Whether there are any gaps in your National Insurance record that might make it smaller.
Write down the amount, and write down the age you will start getting it. Do not guess this age.
The State Pension age is moving from 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028, so it may not be the same as your parents’ was.
Example of a state pension forecast from GOV.UK (accurate as of August 2026)
3. What you spend
Most people skip this one because it takes the longest. At the end of this bit you want two numbers:
- What a year costs you now
- What a year would cost after you stop working
Start with what a year costs you now.
- Take three months of bank statements and add up everything that went out
- Multiply that by four – that gives you a rough year
- Now add on the things that do not happen every month. Car insurance, the MOT, the boiler service, Christmas, birthdays, a holiday etc
Add those together and you have got your first number.
Now go back through the list and ask one question about each thing on it. Would I still be paying this after I stop working?
Some things stop. The mortgage might be paid off by then and the petrol for getting to work definitely stops.
But some things go up too. The heating costs more when you are at home all day. People tend to travel more in the first few years after they stop working, not less.
Add up what is left and you have got your second number – what a year of your retirement will cost. This number is what everything else gets measured against.
4. Your dates
Write down four ages:
- How old you are now
- How old you would like to be when you stop working
- The age you can start taking your State Pension
- The earliest age you can take money out of your own pensions
Your State Pension is the one the government pays you, and you cannot take it early. For most people it starts at 66, but that is going up to 67 between 2026 and 2028. Your forecast from GOV.UK tells you your own age.
Your own pensions are the workplace and private ones you have been paying into. You can start taking money out of these at 55. That goes up to 57 on 6 April 2028.
If you were born on or after 6 April 1973 you will not have turned 55 by then, so 57 is your age. Some older schemes let you go earlier, so check yours rather than assuming.
Now look at the years in between. If you stop working at 60 and your State Pension does not start until 67, that is seven years your own money has to cover on its own. Write that number down. It is key.
5. The sums
Now put the two big numbers next to each other – what you think you will have coming in each year, and what you think a year will cost.
You will get one of three answers. Either you have got enough, you have not got enough, or it is close so small changes will matter.
The worst place to be is not knowing. You can do nothing about it if you don’t know.
What this will not tell you
A spreadsheet can make you feel more sure of yourself than you should be, so here is what it cannot do.
It cannot know what your money will actually earn. It assumes the same growth every single year, and that never happens in real life.
It does not work out your tax. It does not know how long you will live. It does not know if you or your partner will need care one day, and it says nothing about whether your pensions are invested sensibly for someone your age.
Use the sheet to see where you stand today. Then if you do sit down with someone about it, you turn up with your figures already written down and can spend the time working out what to do next, instead of being sent away to go and dig them all out.
The other thing worth saying is that most of the big retirement decisions are one-way. Once you have taken money out of a pension, bought an annuity, or moved a pension somewhere else, you generally cannot put it back. A spreadsheet is a fine way to work out what questions to ask. It is not the thing to base that sort of decision on. Get advice before you act on any of it.
Questions people ask
Does Excel have a retirement calculator? Excel has built-in sums like FV and PMT that will grow a pot forward for you, and there are free templates around that use them. They are fine for a rough answer. Just remember the answer is only as good as the guesses you feed it. Change the growth rate a little and the answer changes a lot.
What is the 4% rule? It says take 4% of your pot in your first year, then take the same amount each year after, adding a bit for rising prices. It came from American research and plenty of people argue about whether it works here. It is a rough sense-check, not a promise.
What is the 30/30/30/10 rule? It is a way of splitting your money between housing, day to day costs, saving and everything else. Different people give different versions of it, so it is more of a rough shape than a real rule. Your own spending figures will tell you far more than any general split.
What is the best retirement planning software in the UK? Depends what you want it for. MoneyHelper and most big pension companies have free tools that will do a decent job. Paid ones do more, but they all need the same information you would gather for a spreadsheet, so doing the spreadsheet first is never wasted time.
Where to start
If you do nothing else this month, do these three things:
- Get your State Pension forecast from GOV.UK
- Write down every pension you can remember having
- Work out what a year of your life costs
That is it. An hour, maybe two, and you will have a figure for what is coming in and a figure for what is going out.
If those two numbers throw up something you cannot answer, give us a ring at Fox Lifestyle Financial Planning and we will go through it with you. No pressure, no jargon, and no daft words.
📞 Call 01772 956 043
📧 support@foxlifefp.com
🦊 Book your free discovery call
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This article and the spreadsheet that goes with it are general information only and are not financial advice. The value of investments can fall as well as rise and you may get back less than you put in. Please take advice before making decisions about your pension.
