{"id":672446,"date":"2026-07-03T22:59:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T22:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/672446\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T22:59:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T22:59:18","slug":"how-to-top-up-your-state-pension-by-targeting-a-second-income-of-995-a-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/672446\/","title":{"rendered":"How to top up your State Pension by targeting a second income of \u00a3995 a month"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even if you get the full State Pension, it isn\u2019t enough to retire on comfortably. Far from it, I\u2019m sorry to say.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the current financial year, the full new State Pension is worth a fraction over \u00a312,547. Unfortunately, that\u2019s \u00a31,353 below the \u00a313,900 a year required to bag the basic \u2018minimum\u2019 lifestyle, according to the latest updated Retirement Living Standards survey (below). <\/p>\n<p>Should you buy Standard Life shares today?\t<\/p>\n<p>Before you decide, please take a moment to review this report first. Despite ongoing uncertainties from US tariffs to global conflicts, Mark Rogers and his team believe many UK shares still trade at substantial discounts, offering savvy investors plenty of potential opportunities to learn about.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why this could be an ideal time to secure this valuable research \u2013 Mark\u2019s analysts have scoured the markets to reveal 5 of his favourite long-term \u2018Buys\u2019. Please, don\u2019t make any big decisions before seeing them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As my table below shows, it\u2019s nowhere near big enough to fund a moderate lifestyle, let alone a comfortable one.<\/p>\n<p>Lifestyle targetSingle personCoupleMinimum\u00a313,900\u00a322,500Moderate\u00a332,700\u00a345,400Comfortable\u00a345,400\u00a362,700<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Source: Retirement Living Standards survey from Pensions UK.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A popular way to make up the shortfall is to build a balanced portfolio of UK shares from the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These reward you in two ways. First, by building up your capital as their share prices rise. And second, by paying investors regular dividends. Best of all, both the growth and income is entirely free of tax inside a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.co.uk\/personal-finance\/share-dealing\/stocks-and-shares-isa\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stocks and Shares ISA<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Please note that tax treatment depends on the individual circumstances of each client and may be subject to change in future. The content in this article is provided for information purposes only. It is not intended to be, nor does it constitute, any form of tax advice. Readers are responsible for carrying out their own due diligence and obtaining professional advice before making any investment decisions.<\/p>\n<p>How much do you need in your ISA?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now let\u2019s say an investor is targeting a passive income of \u00a3995 a month. That works out to \u00a311,940 a year. That still won\u2019t be enough for a \u2018moderate\u2019 lifestyle, even after it\u2019s added to the State Pension. But it will nudge you closer. With luck you\u2019ll have other sources of retirement savings, such as a company or personal pension. The more the merrier, frankly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How much you need in your pot to generate that \u00a3995 depends on the underlying yield from the shares you own.<\/p>\n<p>With a 4% yield, you\u2019d need \u00a3298,500 invested.<\/p>\n<p>At 5%, the required total falls to \u00a3238,800.<\/p>\n<p>And at 6%, the figure drops to \u00a3199,000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those look daunting, but can be achieved over longer periods such as 30 years. Let\u2019s say somebody invests \u00a3200 a month, and it grows at an average annual rate of 9.64%. That\u2019s the average annual return on a Stocks and Shares ISA over the last decade, according to advisory group Unbiased. By the end of that term, they\u2019d have \u00a3404,396. Which is way more than my target.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s why I bought Standard Life shares<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One dividend share I rate right now is FTSE 100 insurer Standard Life (<a class=\"tickerized-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.twelfthmagpie.com\/tickers\/lse-sdlf\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">LSE: SDLF<\/a>), which sells protection and retirement products. Today, it has a trailing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.co.uk\/personal-finance\/share-dealing\/guides\/should-i-buy-growth-or-income-shares\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">dividend yield <\/a>of 6.5%, one of the most generous on the blue-chip index.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Standard Life doesn\u2019t just pay investors a high income. It aims to increase it every year. The board has increased shareholder payouts for the last 10 years in a row, at an annual average annual rate of 3.18%.\u00a0Better still, investors have got some pretty decent growth on top. The Standard Life share price is up an impressive 30% over the last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dividends aren\u2019t guaranteed, and Standard Life has to generate enough cash to fund them. And after a strong run, its shares may idle for a while. They might even fall. That\u2019s investing. But over the long run, I think a balanced portfolio of stocks like this one make a tempting option to top up the State Pension.<\/p>\n<p>Should you invest \u00a35,000 in Standard Life right now?<\/p>\n<p>When investing expert Mark Rogers and his team have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the flagship Twelfth Magpie Share Advisor newsletter he has run for nearly a decade has provided thousands of paying members with top stock recommendations from the UK and US markets.<\/p>\n<p>And right now, Mark thinks there are 6 standout stocks that investors should consider buying. Want to see if Standard Life made the list?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harvey Jones owns shares in Standard Life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even if you get the full State Pension, it isn\u2019t enough to retire on comfortably. Far from it,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-672446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672446","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=672446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}