93% off course to attain their desired retirement

More than 9 out of 10 people are off course for the kind of retirement they aspire to, research from a pension firm suggests. Some 93% said they were not on track, responding to Aegon's third UK Readiness Report, meaning there has been no improvement since last year.Nearly two thirds (62%) reported feel unconfident about being able to retire when they want to and 55% admitted to having never checked their pension savings.Aegon said the nation's 'readiness score' has fallen over 12 months from 52 to 47. People want to retire aged 63, the company found.The fall in readiness is due to people's expectations about the amount of money they hope to retire on each year rising from £35,000 to £42,000.This was despite the fact it would require a saving pot of more than £1m, a sum higher than the new pension lifetime allowance. {desktop}{/desktop}{mobile}{/mobile}Although more than five million people have been auto-enrolled into a pension scheme 41% of employees reported not knowing how much of their salary they were contributing to their pension pot.Some 59% said they had no idea how much their employer is contributing.On top of this, half of the UK's workers had no idea how much they had saved into their company pension so far.Half of all respondents had never done anything to review their retirement plans, and 55% had never checked the performance of their retirement savings.David Beattie, managing director at Aegon UK Direct, said: "It is deeply worrying that as a nation we're still failing to prepare for our futures, despite the big changes made to pensions in recent years."There's a huge disconnect between the amount people have saved and the retirement income they want in retirement. Most people want an income which would require more than £1m of savings. How close are they to that?"With the lifetime allowance due to fall to £1m, unless individuals also have substantial non-pension savings or defined benefit pensions, £42,000 isn't just unrealistic – it's more than the Government will allow."

93% off course to attain their desired retirement

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