There remains a yawning gap between the amounts of money that British women expect to receive each year in retirement as compared with their male counterparts. The disparity has long been recognised but has been highlighted again by figures from the financial services group Prudential.
According to the latest numbers, the average British male’s taking his pension this year will see his retirement savings pot worth roughly £18,000 annually, while British women in the same position can expect closer to £12,250.
Prudential makes clear that the while the pensions gap will leave women retiring this year almost a third less well off than men as they get older, their incomes prospective have been closing in on their male counterparts in recent years. The pensions gap in fact closed by around a thousand pounds over the course of the past year alone but there is little comfort for anyone when it comes to retirement savings as the adjustment has been put down entirely to the shrinking entitlement of British men.
“Not only does the gap remain stubbornly wide, but anticipated retirement incomes have this year hit a five year low for both men and women,” noted Vince Smith-Hughes, Prudential’s income expert.
“The practical steps that women can take to improve their retirement income prospects include maintaining pension contributions during career breaks and, if possible, making voluntary National Insurance contributions after returning to work,” he added.
Of course, the most obvious and well understood advice experts offer anyone concerned about their pension prospects is simply to set as much money aside as often as possible. Only through regular saving will today’s younger generations be able to secure themselves a comfortable retirement. Which is why the point emphasised repeatedly by financial advisers is for work-age Britons to start setting money aside as savings as soon as they are able.
The scale of the financial concerns being faced by pension-age Britons, particularly women, was again highlighted by the latest research report from Prudential. The figures in fact suggest that close to half of all British women entering retirement this year feel that they do not have a large enough pension to be genuinely comfortable in later life.
