{"id":539213,"date":"2026-04-19T10:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T10:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/539213\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T10:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T10:22:09","slug":"im-certain-the-state-pension-will-end-so-im-saving-10-of-my-salary-in-my-20s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/539213\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m certain the state pension will end so I\u2019m saving 10% of my salary in my 20s"},"content":{"rendered":"

It feels faintly absurd to be thinking about retirement<\/a> at 25. Not in the sense that I\u2019m too young to do so, but in a more existential way.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to think about how much I will need tucked away in my later years when I\u2019m not even sure if the state pension \u2013 which millions currently rely on \u2013 will exist in a few decades.<\/p>\n

I have been putting 10 per cent of my salary into my pension<\/a> since I started my job at The i Paper in 2024, hoping to build a substantial pot in case the Government support is scrapped in the next half a century.<\/p>\n

New FeatureIn ShortQuick Stories. Same trusted journalism.<\/p>\n

For now, the state pension<\/a> offers a thin kind of reassurance. At \u00a3241.30 a week \u2013 \u00a312,547.60 a year \u2013 it\u2019s not exactly luxury living, but it\u2019s something.<\/p>\n

Strip out a paid-off mortgage (optimistically) and no debts (even more optimistically), and you\u2019re left with just over \u00a31,000 a month to live on. Manageable, perhaps, depending on what \u201cliving\u201d looks like in 40 years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the problem. Forty years is not just a long way off \u2013 it\u2019s another world entirely.<\/p>\n

Housing<\/a>, healthcare, politics \u2013 everything that determines whether that \u00a3241.30 a week is enough is wildly uncertain.<\/p>\n

And beneath it all sits a deeper, more unsettling question: will the state pension even exist in its current form?<\/p>\n

To be totally honest, I don\u2019t think it will. In fact, I\u2019m increasingly convinced it won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m saving as if it won\u2019t be there at all.<\/p>\n

This is what \u201ctaking responsibility\u201d looks like for my generation. We\u2019re all \u2013 or at least my friends and I \u2013 quietly assuming that the social contract won\u2019t hold.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a particularly empowering mindset. It\u2019s more like pre-emptive disappointment. And yet it\u2019s hard to ignore the direction of travel.<\/p>\n

The idea of means-testing the state pension \u2013 once controversial \u2013 is no longer unthinkable. It wouldn\u2019t even be unprecedented.<\/p>\n

When the state pension was first introduced, it was only available to those on low incomes. Countries like Australia already taper support based on retirement income.<\/p>\n

And means-testing is happening here. A few years ago, free TV licences for over-75s were taken away as a universal benefit and narrowed so that only those on pension credit still qualify, meaning many pensioners are now required to pay.<\/p>\n

Winter Fuel Payments were then also tightened from a near-universal payment into a means-tested one with income thresholds, prompting political backlash and partial reversals, but not a return to full universality.<\/p>\n

If these benefits can be trimmed, restricted or reshaped, why not the state pension itself?<\/p>\n

The cost alone makes it an obvious target. By the end of this year, official predictions suggest that the UK is expected to spend around \u00a3146bn a year on state pensions.<\/p>\n

That figure is so high largely because people are living longer, so more people are drawing a pension for more years than in the past. On top of that, the triple lock means the state pension rises each year by whichever is highest \u2013 wages, inflation, or 2.5 per cent \u2013 so the cost doesn\u2019t just grow with retirees, it grows faster than the economy in many years.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not just a large number \u2013 it\u2019s a political pressure point. Something will have to give. The question is when, and for whom.<\/p>\n

Which leaves people like me \u2013 young, financially stretched, and already juggling rising living costs \u2013 trying to prepare for a retirement that may look nothing like the one we\u2019ve been promised.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re constantly told to think ahead, to start early, to make pension contributions as soon as we can because \u201cfuture us will thank us for it\u201d, even while the present makes that harder to do.<\/p>\n

This is where the contradiction bites. I\u2019ve just bought my first home, so inevitably, money is tight.<\/p>\n

Every spare pound has a job and is directed into different pots \u2013 furniture, repairs \u2013 the endless, invisible costs of setting up a life. And yet I\u2019m supposed to prioritise a version of myself that may not exist in a system that may not either.<\/p>\n

So, yes, I still save \u2013 or try to. I push money into my pension each month, even as another part of me whispers that I deserve to enjoy it now. And maybe the more rational response to all this uncertainty isn\u2019t to keep over-optimising for a future that keeps shifting, but to make sure I\u2019m also able to live properly in the present.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the trap, isn\u2019t it? If my generation collectively leans into that thinking, we\u2019re even less prepared for what\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n

I envy my grandparents. Not just for their \u201cgold-plated\u201d defined benefit pensions \u2013 though that certainly helps \u2013 but for the stability that underpinned them.<\/p>\n

My grandad told me a story the other day about how his employer helped him buy his first home, lending him the deposit like it was nothing extraordinary. Today, that sounds like fantasy.<\/p>\n

We are told to be prudent, disciplined, forward-thinking but it\u2019s difficult to plan for a future that feels so fundamentally uncertain.<\/p>\n

So I save. Reluctantly, inconsistently, sometimes resentfully. Not because I trust the system \u2013 but because I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It feels faintly absurd to be thinking about retirement at 25. Not in the sense that I\u2019m too…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4178,4174,4175,4204,3668,2221,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-539213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-pensions","11":"tag-personal-finance","12":"tag-personalfinance","13":"tag-retirement","14":"tag-savings","15":"tag-state-pension","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}