Grey ‘gap year’ leads the way as NEST reveals the nation’s top 5 retirement plans

Exploring the world is the nation’s top priority for retirement, reveals new research by NEST (National Employment Savings Trust).

Aspirations for an adventurous and active retirement are high on the agenda with travelling and holidays, taking up new hobbies and dining out regularly making the top 5. The more traditional retirement activities of relaxing at home and treating grandchildren also ranked highly on the YouGov poll of almost 2,000 working-age adults who haven’t yet retired.  

Respondents were asked to select the five activities they would most like to do during retirement. The top activities were:

1. Go travelling or on multiple holidays (62 per cent)
2. Relax at home (49 per cent)
3. Take up a hobby (45 per cent)
4. Dine out regularly (38 per cent)
5. ‘Treat’ grandchildren (28 per cent)

Whilst many are dreaming of a sun-soaked retirement, it seems there’s still work to do to make these aspirations a reality. When asked, 50 per cent don’t think they’re currently saving enough to live comfortably in retirement and 22 per cent don’t know whether they are or not.

Looking at how they will fund their retirement, workplace pensions led the way with 1 in 3 consumers (33 per cent) seeing it as their main source of income followed by the state pension (21 per cent). While 1 in 6 (17 per cent) said that they didn’t know what their main source of retirement income would be, winning the lottery and a lucky game of roulette were cited by the more optimistic among us.

Main source of retirement income:

• 33 per cent said workplace pension
• 21 per cent said state pension
• 17 per cent said they didn’t know
• 12 per cent said private pension
• 9 per cent said personal savings
• 5 per cent said they didn’t think they would ever retire
• 2 per cent said other

Matthew Blakstad, head of member policy at NEST, commented:

'Future retirees are setting their sights on living life to the full. It’s fantastic that people are planning to carry on enjoying the things they love doing today in later life.
Many of us regularly put aside some of our wages to fund our summer holidays. Financing how we want to spend our retirement needs the same kind of forward planning.'

‘It’s interesting to see that saving into a workplace pension is becoming the norm and that many people intend to use it as their main source of retirement income. Five million people have been auto enrolled into a workplace pension scheme in the last three years and there are five million more to go. Auto enrolment is a helping hand to bring us all closer to achieving our retirement aspirations.’