This lady is helping us digest pensions on the Pension Playpen’s coffee morning on Tuesday 23rd September (Tomorrow – Tuesday).

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I’ve spoken to a few times on the web and spent too long on her site.  Next month at the Pension UK Conference , I’ll be able to hear her speak live – good news.

Here is her pronouncing how she is coming for us in the UK.

It’s simple: This is the best kept secret in retirement planning

I once had a mentor who gave me advice I’ll never forget: “Do it the !#$&ing easy way, Bec.” Yes – he was blunt, but he wanted me to have an easier life. And his advice has stuck with me – ever since! And in almost everything I do I look for the easy way!

Because most of us make things harder than they need to be. And nowhere is that more obvious than in retirement planning.

We’ve been sold a myth that planning for retirement has to be a lifelong grind. That you need to scrimp for decades, or get fancy with complex advice and risky investments, or panic-save in your 60s.

But not if you learn the easy way – and, it’s the way that lets you enjoy life before you retire, too.

The secret? Spend seven or eight focused years in midlife knowing what your goal is, throwing more into your pension than ever. Get to ‘enough’, then stop pushing and let your standard workplace and employee contributions keep going in. Let compounding do its thing while you get on with living your best lifestyling years.

Yes. I said just seven or eight years – but the key is – they should be in your late forties or fifties if you can when the kids are (mostly) off your hands, the mortgage isn’t bleeding you dry, and you finally have some room in the budget to reallocate your spending, before those savings evaporate on lifestyle spending without intent.

Do that, and you’ll be doing it the easy way. You’ll have more money later in life yes indeed! But you’ll also get another huge benefit. You’ll have freedom, lifestyle and the power of choice earlier in your life.

This is the easy way to prepare for retirement – and it is much easier than waiting until your late 50s to panic-save.

Don’t believe me… let me prove it.

Let’s take Sarah and Tom. They’re both 48, both earning £60,000 a year, and both sitting on about £100,000 each in their workplace pensions. Like most people, they’re tipping in the standard 8% combined (3% employer + 5% employee) every year. That works out to about £4,800 going in annually, even if they don’t do anything extra.

Now here’s where timing makes all the difference.

Sarah decides to get serious. From 48 to 55 she salary sacrifices an extra £800 a month into her pension. That’s £9,600 a year, or £76,800 gross over eight years. But thanks to tax relief and National Insurance savings, it only reduces her take-home pay by about £5,500 a year. In other words, she gives up roughly £40k net over the whole eight-year window — while her pension receives the full £76.8k boost.

At 55, she stops the extra saving. That £800 a month flows back into her lifestyle budget to fund holidays, eating out, enjoying life. Meanwhile, her pension pot is left to compound away in the background.

Tom takes a different path. He enjoys the spare cash through his 40s and early 50s. But by 58, retirement is suddenly staring him down. He panics, starts chucking in the same £800 a month, and keeps going until 65. Same gross contributions. Same net cost to his pocket. But he gave his money less time to grow.

And compound investing is the real reason we use our pension pot to grow our money.

By the time they both hit 65, the gap is crystal clear. Sarah’s pension pot has grown to around £649,000. Tom’s sits closer to £563,000. Same net cost, same effort — but Sarah ends up almost £86,000 ahead simply because she acted earlier and gave her money more time to grow.

And here’s the better news: Sarah also got to enjoy her lifestyle in her late 50s and early 60s, because she’d already done the work to get her spending on track. Tom, on the other hand, had to keep tightening his budget right through his 60s just to play catch-up — and he still finished behind.

Same out-of-pocket cost. Same contributions. But Sarah’s money had an extra decade in the market — and compounding worked its magic. She essentially bought herself a decade of freedom: stopping her extra contributions at 55, keeping on working, and enjoying her lifestyle budget while her pension quietly grew in the background.Why it works

The maths is simple but powerful:

Take Sarah on £60,000. Every £9,600 she put into her pension only reduced her take-home pay by about £5,500. That’s because she got 40% tax relief and NI savings on the contribution. It’s like getting a 70+% boost before her money even hit the pension account. (She puts in £1, but the system tops it up by 72p.)

Now compare that with someone on £45,000. The same £9,600 pension contribution would only cut their take-home pay by about £6,900. That’s still a 39% uplift.

Either way, your pension gets more than you give up. And once the money is inside the pension, compounding does the rest. At 7% growth a year, those early contributions doubled and doubled again by the time Sarah retired — and if returns were higher, she’d have been even further ahead. (And yes – if it fell she’d still be ahead too).

This is why I say: don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t buy into the myth that you have to grind away forever, or panic in your 60s.

Instead, spend seven or eight focused years in midlife boosting your pension deliberately. Then assess if you’ve reached ‘enough’ and if you have, you might find you can redirect the money back into lifestyle while compounding does the heavy lifting for you.

But what if you’re not on £60,000 a year? But what if you’re closer to the average UK salary? The same principle still applies — the numbers are smaller, but starting earlier is just as powerful.

Take Anna and James. They each earn £35,000. At 48, they’ve built up around £50,000 in their workplace pensions and are coasting along on the standard auto-enrolment contributions (about 8% of salary, roughly £2,800 a year between them and their employers).

Anna decides to get focused. From 48 to 55 she salary-sacrifices an extra £400 a month into her pension — £4,800 a year, or £38,400 over eight years. Thanks to tax relief and NI savings, it only reduces her take-home pay by about £288 a month (around £27,600 net in total). At 55 she stops; the £400 flows back into her lifestyle budget while her pension compounds away in the background.

James waits. He enjoys the spare cash through his 40s and early 50s. At 58, with retirement suddenly in sight, he starts paying the same £400 a month and keeps going until 65. Same gross contributions, similar net cost — just fewer years in the market.

By 65, the difference is clear. Anna’s pension is about £341,000. James’s is about £291,000. Same out-of-pocket cost. Same effort. But Anna is roughly £50,000 ahead simply because she acted earlier and gave compounding more time to work.

And the best part? Anna also got to enjoy her late 50s and early 60s without tightening her belt. She had already done the work, while James was still stuck playing catch-up.

Your prime time years

This is why I call the late 40s and 50s your prime time years. In my opinion, we have the opportunity to tackle our Prime Time in three phases:

1. The Set-up phase (late 40s–mid 50s): You knuckle down. Pay off debts. Boost pension contributions. Get the compounding flywheel spinning.
2. Lifestyling years (mid-to-late 50s): You ease off. Redirect money back into travel, fun, and freedom, while compounding does the work.
3. Part-timing (60s): You choose how you want to wind down gradually into retirement. Work if you want, retire if you want. The power is yours – if you do the preparation work.

Get the set-up phase right, and you win twice. More fun in your 50s. More money in your 60s. That’s the path to an epic retirement.

To get to the coffee morning press here at 10.30 on Tuesday Tomorrow  (23rd Sept)