Financially, becoming a single mum wasn't too tough
"When I became a single mum it wasn’t terribly shocking financially. He was a bit of a leech anyway. It was my property so we didn’t have to do any of the splitting property up – I paid for practically everything anyway.
"I was always doing the bills and everything. I’m quite savvy at getting bills down and getting the best deals on gas and electric. I won’t change over on the door if someone comes knocking, but I keep my eye on things. Go and do my own research online and read some articles. But it’s quite simple really with bills to compare the figures.
"But then I’ve always been quite good with money. I was encouraged to save from an early age – my dad was always quite financially savvy. It would probably say it on his epitaph: “You can only spend it once!”
If only my daughter was as savvy!
"My daughter just spends her money on takeaways and doesn’t listen to me. Different era, isn’t it. They have more than we had – access to everything. A bag of crisps was a treat when I was a kid, whereas it’s always in the cupboard now. I don’t think she really understands the value of money.
"I think buying your own property is so far away from being possible now, so kids just stay home and get mollycoddled. And we let them. She has a part time job but she spends it all. Never saves it. There’s so much more they can spend it on now, and it’s not even writing cheques or handing over real cash.
"I suppose I should be saving money for her as well, but then she’d have the house if anything happened to me. And I have mortgage cover so the mortgage would be paid off if I went.
"At least she’s beautiful, so I guess she’ll just have to marry wealth! When I mention it she just grunts."
Why do they have to make it so confusing?
"I got something through the other day about an old investment but I haven’t really looked at it. There’s all that jargon. I’m often looking for the catch in things. Like when they offer to sell shares for a certain amount, I find that confusing. You don’t know if you’ll actually get that amount. And I don’t always understand the fees – would be helpful to just see one number and pay that.
"It’s the same with pensions. I have no idea what they’re worth, or how I’d go about working it out. I just pay them automatically, and pay some AVCs for some of them. (Look at me, I’m jargoning now! Additional voluntary contributions, that means.) Yeah, AVCs, but I don’t really know what they do. Increases my bucket I guess.
"I quite like premium bonds because I kind of understand them. The money’s safe, I can take it out whenever I like, and I might win the big one. I tend to win every couple of months, about £20 or so. If were to win the million that would be marvellous. Someone’s got to win it! I could sell the house and go live in Spain. But I’d probably invest half of it. Though where to invest it I don’t know. I’d probably have to get a financial adviser."
My biggest money question...
"I’ve got various workplace pensions but how can I figure out what it will actually work out to when I retire?"
Answer by Helen Howcroft, Equanimity IFA
The Money Advice Service have a free calculator which you can use to answer this exact question. It enables you to calculate the amount of income that you could have in retirement taking into account:
1) the value of your current workplace pensions
2) the amount that you and your employer are contributing to your workplace pension, and
3) when you hope to retire.
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Check out Helen Howcroft's advisor profile and see how else she could help.
+ Holly Mackay's view
By Holly Mackay, CEO of Boring Money
It’s also worth thinking about why you have lots of workplace pensions. Is this for a good reason? Or are they just the leftovers of life!? If you wont get hit with exit fees or if these are not in ‘final salary schemes’ then it might be worth considering consolidating them into one for ease.
As a back of a fag packet approach, add up what you have today. Check out the lump sum calculator on This is Money. If this amount is invested in the stock market, it’s not unreasonable to assume long-term growth of 4%–6%. You’ll also need to put in a time-frame. This will give you a final figure. This is an illustration of what you might have at retirement based on what you have saved today.
Another rule of thumb I use is to divide this total amount by about 22 to give me a super rough idea of what this would look like as an annual number as a retirement income.
So, if you have £50,000 today, you’re 20 years off retirement, and markets grow at an average of 5%, you’d get about £135,500. If you traded that in for a retirement income with a pension company that would buy you about £6,150 a year. All super approximate and depends on all manner of things. The Money Advice Service calculator will be more precise – but I like my little rules of thumb for quick approximations.
