Do we live for today or save for a retirement we might never see?

New research suggests Britons believe they need £42,456 a year after tax to retire comfortably, but with a mortgage, private school fees and a ten-year-old to raise, I’m wondering how we’re supposed to afford the future while paying for the present.

Retirement closer than it used to be

Retirement used to sound appealing when I was younger. Finish work, collect your pension, maybe take up gardening and enjoy holidays without checking your annual leave allowance. These days, I find myself wondering whether we’ll ever be able to afford a new oven, never mind a holiday.

At 50, retirement is no longer some distant event involving an elderly version of myself wearing sensible shoes. It’s creeping into conversations with H, usually somewhere between discussing the mortgage, Cyrus’s increasing school fees and whatever has decided to break in the house that week.

And I’ll admit something. Retirement actually scares the living daylights out of both of us.

We’re both hardworking people. Our careers matter loads to us, and neither of us can imagine just stopping work one day. But loving your job and being financially prepared to retire are two very different things.

At the moment, we don’t have a clear plan or the funds to retire comfortably. We’re still paying for the life we’ve built, and sometimes I wonder where the money for the next chapter is supposed to come from.

So when I read new research suggesting that UK adults believe they need an average after-tax household income of £42,456 a year to feel financially secure in retirement, I had one immediate question.

We’re trying to pay for the life we’re living while somehow saving enough for the one we hope to have.

The mortgage, school fees and everything else demanding our money

I had Cyrus at 40, which means our family timeline looks rather different from that of parents who had children in their 20s. When he turns 18, I’ll be approaching 60. At an age when some couples are looking forward to an empty nest, we could still be helping our son through further education or supporting him as he finds his feet.

I wouldn’t change having him later in life, but it does make retirement planning more complicated. We have private school fees to weave into the household budget, H is still paying off a student loan and there’s the mortgage. Dare I mention the mortgage? I’d rather not.

Then there are our annual gym memberships. Fitness matters greatly to both of us, and while some people might regard it as an unnecessary expense, exercise is part of how we look after our physical and mental wellbeing. I don’t consider staying active a luxury, although the monthly direct debits occasionally suggest otherwise. And just when you think you’ve accounted for everything, the house decides to join in.

Our roof recently needed fixing, the oven broke and the car needs new brake pads. Three expenses we could have done without, but none we can particularly ignore. Nobody wakes up on a Saturday morning looking forward to spending money on brake pads, especially when there are plenty of other things competing for the family budget.

Cyrus, meanwhile, has come up with his own solution to our financial worries. He’s decided that if H and I simply work more, we’ll still be able to afford the £30 inflatable dinosaur costume he’s set his heart on for Halloween. Apparently, all his friends are getting one, and he’s determined not to be the only child without an enormous inflatable dinosaur outfit.

I had to admire his logic. In his ten-year-old world, earning more money is apparently as straightforward as working a few extra hours. And while H and I are worrying about mortgages, pensions and whether the car will pass its next MOT, Cyrus is concerned about the very real possibility of being the only boy at Halloween who isn’t dressed as a dinosaur.

I suppose that’s childhood for you. He sees £30 and a dinosaur costume. We see another expense to squeeze into a month that’s already looking rather expensive. And between those two perspectives is the reason we’re working so hard in the first place.

It’s these unexpected costs that make saving for retirement feel so difficult. We’re not living some extravagant lifestyle. We’re raising a child, maintaining a home, working and trying to enjoy ourselves occasionally. Yet somewhere among all those commitments, we’re supposed to be preparing for a future in which neither of us receives a salary to afford Council Tax, even if we pay off the mortgage.

Even my gym coffees have come under scrutiny

And then there are the smaller expenses that don’t look particularly frightening until you add them up.

Christmas, Halloween, school trips, uniform and the endless requests for money that accompany having a child. There’s always another event, another squishy, game, book, costume or another school activity that needs paying for. Individually, they might seem manageable, but collectively they take their toll.

I love making these occasions special for Cyrus. I don’t begrudge him those experiences, but I sometimes wonder how we’re supposed to save for retirement when the present seems determined to spend everything first. Even my coffees at the gym have come under the microscope.

I recently discovered that I’d spent around £500 on coffee at the gym over the course of a year. Five hundred pounds. On coffee. I’m still not entirely sure how that happened, although I suspect it involved a lot of mornings when I thought I’d just have one while I was there. That’s roughly £42 a month, which doesn’t sound quite so dreadful until you multiply it by 12. Suddenly, those innocent little lattes look a lot less innocent.

And I know what some people will say. Stop buying coffee and put the money into your pension. It’s perfectly sensible advice, mathematically speaking, but life is supposed to contain the occasional small pleasure.

For me, the gym isn’t just somewhere I exercise, it’s part of my routine, my wellbeing and the time I carve out for myself between work and family responsibilities. Sometimes having a coffee afterwards is the only opportunity I get to sit down without immediately thinking about the next thing on my list.

Could I spend less? Yes. Should I pay more attention to where the money goes? Clearly. But I don’t think the answer to retirement anxiety is necessarily to strip every enjoyable thing out of the present.

Although I have started taking a flask now.

Britons think they need more than £42,000 to retire comfortably

According to research conducted by YouGov for UK wealth management and employee benefits firm Mattioli Woods, adults believe they need an average after-tax household income of £42,456 a year, or £3,538 a month, to feel financially secure and live comfortably in retirement.

That’s household income, not an individual salary, and it represents what people believe they’ll need in today’s money. It isn’t a recommended retirement income or a calculation of what everyone should have saved.

The findings reveal considerable differences between generations. Adults aged 18 to 24 believe they’ll need £55,272 a year after tax, compared with £36,252 among those aged 55 and over. That’s an annual difference of £19,020.

I find that fascinating. Younger adults, who potentially have decades of working life ahead of them, anticipate needing considerably more than people approaching retirement.

Perhaps it’s because they’ve grown up hearing about expensive housing, rising living costs and the difficulties of getting onto the property ladder. Or they just  have different expectations about what a comfortable retirement should look like. The research doesn’t establish why younger people gave higher estimates, but it does show how differently generations view financial security.

I also wonder what retirement will look like for Cyrus’s generation. He’s only ten, so his immediate concerns are more likely to involve school, swimming and whatever happens to be on the family calendar. But by the time he’s an adult, what will housing cost? Will buying a home be achievable? And will he have the same opportunities to build savings and pensions as previous generations?

I don’t want to spend his childhood worrying about every possible financial challenge he might face. I do, however, want him to have choices.

Does living in Newcastle make retirement cheaper?

The research also found substantial regional differences. Londoners believe they’ll need £53,292 a year after tax to retire comfortably, while people here in the North East estimate £32,232. That’s a difference of £21,060 annually.

Living in Newcastle, I can understand why people might expect to need less. Housing costs can be lower than in London, and everyday expenses may look different depending on where you live. But heating bills don’t become more charitable because we live north of the Tyne, and supermarkets don’t offer us a regional discount at the checkout.

Then there are the things we’d actually like retirement to include. H and I both enjoy keeping fit, and I’d like to think we’ll still be exercising, travelling and spending time together when we’re older. Our connection to Persian culture and family life is important to us, too. I’d like to have the freedom to travel and maintain those connections without every decision becoming a financial calculation.

Elsewhere, respondents in the West Midlands expect to need £46,416 a year, while those in the South East estimate £44,388. Of course, these figures represent expectations rather than the actual cost of retirement. A couple with a paid-off mortgage and grown-up children may have very different expenses from parents still supporting a son or daughter through education.

And houses still need maintaining, even when the children have left home. I doubt our roof will suddenly develop a sense of financial responsibility when we reach 65.

We love working, but what happens when we can’t?

The survey found that people expect to retire at an average age of 65, although there are regional differences. Respondents in the South East and South West anticipate retiring at 67, while Londoners expect to stop working at 64. I’m not entirely sure what age I’d choose.

Work is important to both H and me. Our careers have shaped much of our adult lives, and neither of us is particularly good at sitting still. I enjoy writing, being creative and having something to get my teeth into. I can imagine continuing with Saffron & Cyrus long after I’ve finished working in a conventional job. But again, there is a cost to this too, and there’s a difference between choosing to work because you enjoy it and having to work because you can’t afford to stop.

As we get older, health becomes harder to take for granted. Perimenopause has certainly made me more aware of how much our bodies can change. And while I hope to remain fit, active and working for many years, I can’t assume everything will continue exactly as it is now.

The Mattioli Woods research found that 33% of respondents were concerned about losing income or becoming unable to work, while 39% worried about unexpected health or long-term care costs. Those concerns feel relevant in midlife. Most retirement plans rely on years of earning, saving and making regular pension contributions. But illness, redundancy, caring responsibilities and unexpected changes at work can affect those plans.

For women who have taken career breaks or reduced their hours to raise children, building a pension can be complicated. And if we’re relying on working for as long as possible, what happens if one of us can’t?

What if we never make it to retirement?

Then there are the what-ifs. The ones that don’t fit neatly into pension calculators or retirement forecasts. What if one of us becomes seriously ill? What if we can’t work as long as we’d hoped? What if we spend the next 15 or 20 years worrying about saving enough money, only to discover that we don’t get to enjoy the retirement we’ve spent so long preparing for?

It’s a horrible thought, but it’s one that occasionally crosses my mind. At 50, I’m increasingly aware that good health isn’t guaranteed, however much time I spend in the gym or how carefully I try to look after myself.

We’re trying to give Cyrus a good childhood while somehow putting money aside for a future that feels both frighteningly close and impossibly far away. And I sometimes wonder whether we’re getting the balance right.

Should we be saving more aggressively for retirement, cutting back on gym memberships and those coffees I’ve apparently been financing at an alarming rate? Or should we be enjoying the years we have together while Cyrus is still young enough to want to spend time with us? Because the truth is, none of us knows how much time we have.

I don’t want to look back and regret not saving enough. But I don’t want to look back and realise that we spent years putting off experiences, worrying about money and promising ourselves we’d enjoy life when we retired. I want us to grow old together. I want to see Cyrus become an adult, build his own life and one day roll his eyes at his parents for still going to the gym.

But I also want us to enjoy being a family now, while we’re all here and able to make memories together.

There is no magic retirement number

Amit Joshi, managing director of wealth at Mattioli Woods, says the research demonstrates how differently people view financial security in later life.

“There is no one-size-fits-all retirement income target,” he says.

Joshi explains that the amount someone needs depends on their circumstances, financial commitments and the lifestyle they hope to enjoy. A household receiving £42,456 a year after tax might feel perfectly comfortable if it has no mortgage, manageable expenses and few dependants. Another household receiving the same amount could face significant financial pressure because of rent, care costs or outstanding debts.

There’s also the question of where that income comes from. A pension pot isn’t the same as an annual retirement income, and the amount someone needs to save depends on when they retire, their other sources of income and how long their money must last.

The survey doesn’t tell us how many respondents are on course to achieve their desired retirement income. For families like ours, perhaps the first step is understanding what we already have, what we might need and what we can realistically afford to put aside without making the present miserable.

Free, impartial guidance is available through MoneyHelper, while the government’s State Pension forecast service can help people understand when they may qualify and how much they could receive.

Do we live for today or save for tomorrow?

That’s the question I keep coming back to. Do we live for today or save for a retirement we might never see? I know the sensible answer is to do a bit of both, but that’s easier said than done when there’s so much to pay for.

We’re told to save for retirement, build our pensions and prepare for the years when we no longer work. All perfectly reasonable advice. But we’re also told to make memories, enjoy our children while they’re young and look after our physical and mental wellbeing.

And what if we don’t make it to retirement? What if illness changes everything, or one of us can’t work as long as we’d planned? What if we spend years denying ourselves holidays, experiences and the occasional coffee, only to find that the future we’ve been saving for never arrives?

I don’t want to be reckless with money, and I don’t want H and me struggling financially in our later years. But neither do I want Cyrus to remember his childhood as a succession of things we couldn’t do because Mum and Dad were saving for retirement. That’s what frightens me most about getting older. Not the wrinkles, the grey hairs or even the prospect of slowing down, but the realisation that we can’t plan for every eventuality.

We can save, work hard and try to make sensible decisions, yet life can still throw something at us that changes everything. I haven’t worked out the answer, and I suspect plenty of other families haven’t either. For now, we’ll keep working, paying the bills, trying to put something aside and enjoying life where we can. I’ll probably continue scrutinising my gym coffee habit, although having discovered I spent £500 on it last year, the flask is staying.

And that remote desert island? It’s still tempting. No mortgage, no school fees and no car needing new brake pads. Just H, Cyrus and me, living off coconuts. Although knowing my luck, I’d discover the island had a gym with a rather expensive coffee shop.

And how do you know when you’ve got the balance right?

Research note: Figures are drawn from a YouGov survey of 2,078 UK adults conducted on 2–3 September 2026 for Mattioli Woods. Income figures represent respondents’ expectations of after-tax household retirement income in today’s money, not recommended retirement targets.

Editorial disclosure: This article draws on research supplied by Mattioli Woods. It is independent editorial commentary and does not constitute personalised financial advice.

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