In her early fifties and recently divorced, the author Becky Goddard-Hill was renting a little three-bedroom terrace in an affluent area of Nottingham, a cosy base for her daughter, 17, doing A-levels, and her son, 20, at Cambridge University. That was until her financial adviser warned her: “If you carry on renting, you’ll be in a council flat for old people.”
Two decades earlier Goddard-Hill had quit a promising career in social services, with its opportunity to build a pension pot, to care for her son, who was born weighing 3lb. As the author of 16 books for a major publisher on children’s mental health, she says, “I never really earned enough to put anything away for a pension.” She was always there for her kids. “I don’t regret it but I didn’t think ahead. I expected to still be married and that we’d pool our resources.”
Instead, she says with zero self-pity, “I’m single and skint.” There’s no inheritance, “no one to look out for me or look after me”, except for Goddard-Hill herself and that straight-talking financial adviser. Renting, he said, was money thrown away. Buying a house was an investment. At the worst, she could downsize to a flat at 65. He advised her to see her mortgage as her pension.
And so Goddard-Hill, author of Be Resilient, Be You, says, “I’ve just taken on a £300,000 mortgage at the age of 53. I’ll be working till I’m 75 — at least. My repayments are nearly £2,000 a month; terrifying at this age.” But she adds cheerily, “I’m a qualified psychotherapist and I’ve just re-established my private practice. There’s always a bloody way!”
There has to be. For, like Goddard-Hill, many women in their fifties and early sixties are realising that the state pension of £221.20 a week is piffling, and that retiring at state pension age, hoicked to 67 from next year, isn’t an option. As Tilly, a 55-year-old business consultant, notes, “It’s finally dawned that I’ll have to work into my late seventies just to survive.” And Charlotte, 60, a designer, says, “We’re approaching the age of thinking, ‘Oh my God.’ Most of the freelance women I know are in the same situation.”
You can’t just interview freelancers, finger-wagged a male friend, it gives a skewed picture. However, as Natasha, 56, an advertising creative from Edinburgh, says, there are particular reasons why many midlife women are self-employed. “Twenty years ago, before the days of flexible working, women like me took on freelance work so we could be flexible, do a bit at home and look after kids. You box and cox it with your husband” — hers is an IT consultant — “to make it work. But I was the one being more around.”
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As for friends in corporate roles, not everyone was able to cling to the ladder. “Many women gave up their jobs as they had to work such huge hours they could never pick up kids ever or be in their lives at all,” Natasha says. Meanwhile, many freelance women now find that trying to balance home life and career has them caught in a “double trap”: “You didn’t have the jobs that gave you pensions or the jobs that were going to carry on into late life. The creative industries are young people’s industries.”
Natasha recently had no work for three months and her husband “gave” her some money which, she reports, “caused some conflict. He said, ‘I want you to have that,’ and I said, ‘No, no — everything we have is ours. If we split up now, you’d have to give me half — ongoing, mate, ongoing! Till the end of our lives!’ If you’ve actually made joint decisions about what work each of you will do then you’re in joint endeavour after this for many years.” Her situation is not usual. Among those aged 60-64, nearly two thirds of women have no private pension wealth, according to a 2020 report from the Women’s Budget Group. Even those in relationships can find they’re not sharing in joint wealth.
As Charlotte, from Brighton, says: “There are different types of men.” Sixteen years ago she split from her partner, aged 44. “I was my own worst enemy, really,” she says. Firmly feminist, “I didn’t want to get married. I wanted to be an independent woman.” The trouble was, “Nobody had really educated me as to why people get married when they have children. I didn’t get to grips with the fact that you’re financially vulnerable during that period and you need support from your husband.”
As it turned out, throughout that time her partner was stuffing money into his pension. “He was also dealing in stocks and shares but never showed me anything. He wassaving money but I couldn’t afford to. I didn’t have the extra to put into a pension — it was needed in the household.” Looking back, she believes he was exploitative. “He never paid more than his share for anything. When the children were babies, I was still paying half into the joint account even though I was only working three days a week. I do think I had slightly subscribed to that idea that the man would be the one that made sure everything was all right.”
She’s not the only one. Aged 11, Tilly, from Suffolk, was sent to a convent school. “I was taught how to sign my husband’s cheque book, how to cook a dinner party for my husband’s boss and make toys for my children. Oh, and paint my husband’s walls his favourite colour,” she says. “So I naturally assumed I’d meet a millionaire, have kids and live like a princess.”
These sorts of stories are familiar to Baroness Altmann, the former pensions minister and a leading expert. “Women need to know about long-term financial planning and the importance of investing money when young so it can grow over time and hopefully give you a better life later on,” she says. “When women have to stop work or cut hours or change to a lower-paying role while looking after their young children, they might consider asking their partner to pay into a pension for them while they can’t manage. Women already have an earnings penalty when caring for children but they also have a pension penalty, which could leave them poorer for the rest of their life if they ignore the issue.”
When there’s no private pension, few can afford to be generous
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While married women do have more protection than those who are cohabiting, it’s still not a good idea to assume this will protect them if they split up. “Many women lose out on pensions in divorce,” Altmann says. “Even though there are laws about pension sharing on divorce so many women don’t take proper advantage of it and don’t realise the value of pensions. They don’t take financial advice and often fail to take advantage of sharing their husband’s pension.”
It’s not only women with children who end up in a financial mess. Tilly had no kids but did live like a princess, thanks to her own hard graft. After being missold an insurance policy (which paid her £2,000 instead of £120,000 after an accident) she lost faith in the financial services sector and decided to “live life to the full rather than squirrel away hard-earned money”. There was “partying at the Mandarin in Knightsbridge, hosting dinners for friends, diving in Hawaii, New York shopping trips”.
Then she met her husband, who she says is “tight with money, has spreadsheets for every expense”. “We had fun and then, when we married, everything changed. I had a huge global job with big bonuses. He didn’t want to spend his own money but wanted the big house, big cars, big holidays, and I had to pay for much of it.” She got into debt, which she has since repaid, and the couple have downsized. But, Tilly says bluntly, “My husband is very lazy so I work six days a week but I’m hoping that calms down soon as it’s not sustainable for the next 15 years.”
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Meanwhile, it was only after separating from her partner in her forties that Charlotte was forced to “cope with the reality of what was what”. She says, “It’s come home to me — I have not really saved enough and the state pension is about £12,000 a year.” She’s still “working at full tilt” and will keep doing so but at least she enjoys designing. “It’s so much part of who I am, I don’t think I’ll want to stop working.”
For her, though, marriage at 58 has changed everything. Her husband, an accountant, has been employed all his working life and has a “more sensible amount of pension”. “He had to give half of his pot to his ex-wife but it’s still enough that between us we’ll be OK in retirement,” Charlotte says. “My husband is of a provider-type mindset — he wants to be able to do that for people he loves. I’ve seen that it’s OK to rely on someone.”
You married for love, I say, but do you think also, at this stage, there’s that sense of security in having a partner who’s a good earner? “Oh God, definitely!”she says. “Yes, totally.It’s really changed my sense of security, just being relaxed in my life. And it’s the first time I’ve actually really felt that.”
It’s somewhat different for Natasha, married for 25 years. “My husband has got a small pension because he’s freelance. It’s not enough for both of us, it’s barely enough for him. We’ve got no savings. The pension will be to sell our house, and the difference between that and a flat will be what we have to live on. God forbid if you didn’t stay together because then you would definitely not be able to afford two flats and have enough money to live on.
“I really notice that now with friends of mine — there was this era of divorces, wasn’t there? Now people realise you can’t afford to. Normal people can’t split up and have two homes — you’ll be completely broke.”
So what does her financial future look like? “Poor! It’s terrifying, if you think about it, therefore I just don’t think about it. It feels closer than it used to. I used to be able to ignore it. I imagine, in the end, I will try to do whatever work I can.”
When there’s no private pension, few can afford to be generous. Even in generally loving families there can be a waft of ruthlessness and tension between generations, as the squeezed middle inch closer to a meagre-looking future. Helen, 57, a ceramicist who adored her dad and was grief-stricken when he died nevertheless puts it this way: “Luckily my father, who had Parkinson’s, which is really sad, didn’t keep going for another decade in a home that cost almost 2.5 grand a week. He died after only a year.”
After selling her father’s flat Helen and her two sisters received £100,000 each. “I remember him saying he’d split it four ways so the grandchildren would get a chunk but he didn’t say it in the will, so I said to them, ‘No, I’m sorry,’” she says. “My daughters were really cross about it. I said I’d give them two grand each when they got to 25 but I wasn’t dividing it out. I said, ‘You’ll have to look after me in old age otherwise and you won’t want to.’ The entire lot is being put somewhere for my old age and even that won’t be enough for me to live on, but,” she adds with feeling, “it will certainly be better than sod all.”
Some names have been changed
Check how much you’ll get
By Ali Hussain
How can I check if I will get the full state pension?
This government website tells you when and how much state pension you may get: gov.uk/check-state-pension
What will I get if I haven’t paid sufficient contributions?
To qualify for the full new state pension of £221.20 a week, you need 35 qualifying years of national insurance contributions (Nics). Each year of contribution adds about £6.32 a week to your state pension.
Can I make up the difference with a lump sum?
Yes. You can usually only pay for gaps in your Nics record for the past six tax years but there is an extended deadline of April 5 this year for gaps from 2006-07 to 2015-16.
I have paid sufficient contributions but don’t have a private pension. If I keep working and don’t start the state pension until later will I get a higher pension?
Yes, for each year you defer receiving the state pension, you’ll get an extra £12.82 a week.
I’m in my fifties with no pension in place. Is there any point starting one?
Yes, as you will still qualify for tax-free returns, rebates on income tax and contributions from your employer if you pay into a workplace scheme. You will also have access to any private pension from the age of 55, rising to 57 on April 6, 2028.
