Is 50 too late to plan your dream retirement?

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Your retirement will naturally come at the end of a lifetime of hard work. So, it’s understandable that you might think you can leave planning for it until later, perhaps until you turn 50 or in the years afterwards.

In the 2025/26 tax year, you can’t access your pension savings until age 55 (rising to 57 from 2028). Similarly, the State Pension Age is 66, rising to 67 by 2028. As a result, you might well think that there’s no need to seriously consider retirement until you’re approaching these thresholds.

The trouble is, by the time you reach half a century, you might have missed some of the best years of generating growth on your savings.

Thanks to the power of compounding returns, your savings and investments can grow exponentially throughout your career. The sooner you start planning for retirement, the better, because you have a larger window for saving and give your wealth more time to benefit from compounding.

That said, if you’re approaching 50 or are already 50 and haven’t started planning yet, then don’t worry – it’s not too late to make a start.

Find out why, and how working with a financial planner can put you on track towards your dream retirement.

Early saving can be the most effective way to build the retirement fund you need

Before looking at how to plan your retirement and boost your savings at 50 and after, it’s worth understanding why early planning – and, in particular, making pension contributions – can be so beneficial.

By thinking about life after work early on, you can develop a solid plan for how you will financially support yourself. You might decide on some specific goals you have for later life, or try to calculate the kind of income you’ll need so you have a savings target.

Once you have even a loose plan sketched out with factors like these, you can then make informed decisions about what you need to save and where you will hold this wealth.

This is where a pension can play such a valuable role.

Pensions are considered tax-efficient because the contributions you make into one receive Income Tax relief at your highest marginal rate. In effect, that means a £100 pension contribution technically only “costs” you:

• £80 for basic-rate taxpayers
• £60 for higher-rate taxpayers
• £55 for additional-rate taxpayers.

Furthermore, your pension savings are usually invested, either via your provider, yourself, or a financial adviser. This growth is free from Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax (CGT), meaning any returns your pension savings generate will stay in your fund until you withdraw them.

Even more importantly, this growth will compound over time. Effectively, your returns will generate further returns, and so on. Thanks to this, if you start contributing to a pension early, you have the potential to generate significant growth on your savings in the long term.

Consider this example from Hargreaves Lansdown, showing the impact of starting to save at two different points in your career.

These figures state that if you start saving 12% of a £30,000 salary at 30, your pension would be worth around £202,000 at age 67 (subject to investment performance). That’s a savings window of 37 years.

Yet, if you save the same amount starting from 45, you would only have £101,000 at 67 (subject to investment performance).

So, despite only reducing your savings window by 15 years, you’d have half as much saved in your pension.

This shows the value of starting to save earlier and making the most of compounding returns over time.

You can still achieve your dream retirement if you start planning at 50

Having seen the example above, you might be concerned that you’re no longer able to save enough for your dream retirement if you’re starting at 50.

Fortunately, that isn’t quite accurate. While it is generally true that starting to save earlier can help you grow your savings, it’s never too late to start planning for the post-work lifestyle you want.

These three steps could be a good starting point.

1. Define your goals

Knowing what your dream retirement actually looks like is key to making a plan to achieve it. So, before you think about practical steps for saving, it’s worth taking the time to consider your goals. These will then give you a basis when making decisions about your wealth.

Your dream retirement will be entirely individual to you. As a starting point, some of the most common retirement goals include:

• Travelling and going on multiple holidays
• Spending more time with family and friends
• Making a one-off luxury purchase
• Exploring a new hobby
• Starting a business.

Take the time to really think about what the idea of a dream retirement means to you. From there, you can take concrete steps towards achieving it.

2. Boost your pension contributions

Next, consider boosting your pension contributions. While you obviously won’t be able to leave these funds invested for the 37 years described in the example above, you’ll still be able to benefit from tax relief and tax-efficient investment returns.

Unless you’ve consistently opted out of your workplace pension or you are self-employed, you were likely automatically enrolled in your employer’s scheme during your career. While these savings are unlikely to be enough for your dream retirement on their own, they could offer you a base to build on.

However, increasing your contributions later in your career could make a significant difference to the overall size of your pot.

Figures show how saving into your pension from 22 to 66 could result in a fund of £434,000 if you make the minimum auto-enrolment contributions. This assumes a starting salary of £25,000 growing by 3.5% each year, and 5% investment growth with a 1% investment charge.

Crucially, increasing those contributions by just 4% between 60 and 66 could increase this to £461,000. Doing so from 44 to 66 could give you a pot of £537,000.

So, no matter what age you are, increasing your contributions could still be valuable.

Meanwhile, if you have no pension savings whatsoever, you might want to think about moving wealth from elsewhere into your fund.

In 2025/26, you can make tax-efficient pension contributions up to the Annual Allowance. This stands at £60,000 or 100% of your earnings, whichever is lower. You may also be able to carry forward unused Annual Allowance from the three previous tax years, allowing you to contribute a relatively large lump sum at one time.

Whatever your situation, making or increasing pension contributions now could put you back on track towards that dream retirement.

3. Speak to a financial planner

If you’d like professional support planning for retirement, consider working with a financial planner.

A financial planner can help you manage your wealth, ensuring that your pension, savings, and other investments are suitably organised.

Crucially, they’ll do so with your ambitions for the future in mind. They can help you define those targets and make recommendations for your finances so you’re more likely to achieve them.

No matter what you want to do, having the knowledge and experience of a professional planner on your side could help you reach your goals.