The short answer: a one-person household needs about £13,900 a year for a minimum retirement, £32,700 for a moderate one and £45,400 for a comfortable one. For two people sharing costs, it is £22,500, £45,400 and £62,700. The full State Pension covers about £12,547 of that, so the rest has to come from your own savings.
Almost everyone asking this question is really asking two things at once: how much income will I need, and how big a pot does that require? They have very different answers, and conflating them is why the numbers people quote vary so wildly.
Let's take them in order.
What retirement actually costs
The most useful UK benchmark is the Retirement Living Standards, researched by Loughborough University's Centre for Research in Social Policy on behalf of Pensions UK (formerly the PLSA). Rather than picking an arbitrary number, they run discussion groups with members of the public to agree what a minimum, moderate and comfortable retirement actually looks like, then price the shopping basket.
These are the 2026 figures, updated in June 2026:
| Standard | One person | Two people |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum | £13,900 | £22,500 |
| Moderate | £32,700 | £45,400 |
| Comfortable | £45,400 | £62,700 |
What those labels mean in practice:
- Minimum covers your needs with a little left over. One week's holiday in the UK, but no car.
- Moderate adds security and flexibility: a small car replaced every seven years, a two-week three-star holiday abroad, eating out a few times a month.
- Comfortable means financial freedom and some luxuries: a four-star two-week holiday, a newer car, and replacing things without anxiety.
Where the State Pension leaves you
The full new State Pension for 2026/27 is £241.30 a week, about £12,547 a year. You typically need around 35 qualifying National Insurance years to get the full amount.
That single fact reshapes the whole question, and it does so very differently depending on whether you are on your own:
- One person: £12,547 against a £13,900 minimum leaves a shortfall of roughly £1,350 a year. The State Pension alone does not quite reach the minimum standard.
- Two people, both with a full record: about £25,094 combined, comfortably above the £22,500 minimum.
This is the "singles tax" in retirement, and it is substantial. Two people sharing a home split the bills, the council tax and the standing charges. One person carries all of it. A single person needs materially more private saving than half a couple's pot to reach the same standard of living.
So what size pot does that need?
Here is where the rules of thumb come in, and where you should treat every number with healthy scepticism.
The common approach is the 4% sustainable withdrawal rate: the idea that you can draw around 4% of your pot in the first year, adjust it for inflation each year after, and have a reasonable chance of the money lasting roughly 30 years. It is a rough guide originally derived from US market data, not a guarantee.
Applying it to the gap between the State Pension and each standard, for one person:
| Standard | Income needed | Gap after State Pension | Pot needed (4%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | £13,900 | £1,353 | ~£34,000 |
| Moderate | £32,700 | £20,153 | ~£504,000 |
| Comfortable | £45,400 | £32,853 | ~£821,000 |
Those moderate and comfortable numbers are sobering, and they are the reason this question causes so much anxiety. Pensions UK estimates that around 82% of the working population will reach the Minimum standard, but only 23% will reach Moderate and just 9% Comfortable.
The better question: what replacement rate do you need?
The Retirement Living Standards are useful because they are concrete. But they describe an average lifestyle, not yours. Someone who has spent their career earning £120,000 and living accordingly will not experience the "Comfortable" standard as comfortable.
The alternative benchmark, used by the Pensions Commission and in the government's own adequacy modelling, is the Target Replacement Rate: what share of your pre-retirement income you need to maintain your standard of living.
| Pre-retirement income | Target replacement rate |
|---|---|
| Up to £15,000 | 80% |
| £15,000 – £27,500 | 70% |
| £27,500 – £39,300 | 67% |
| £39,300 – £62,800 | 60% |
| Above £62,800 | 50% |
The rate falls as income rises for two sensible reasons: higher earners save a larger share of their income (so they were never living on all of it), and certain costs simply stop — commuting, work clothes, the mortgage, and the pension contributions themselves.
So someone earning £50,000 is targeting around £30,000 in retirement, which is close to the Moderate standard. Someone on £100,000 is targeting £50,000, above Comfortable. Both are "on track" in their own terms.
What to do about it
If the numbers above are uncomfortable, the useful response is not despair but sequencing. In rough priority order:
- Capture your full employer match. If your employer matches contributions and you are not taking the maximum, you are turning down an immediate 100% return. Nothing else beats this.
- Check your State Pension record. The gov.uk forecast takes two minutes. Gaps in your National Insurance record can often be filled relatively cheaply, and each qualifying year is worth roughly £360 a year for life.
- Increase contributions when your income rises. Directing part of each pay rise into your pension is far less painful than cutting current spending, and at higher-rate tax the real cost is around 60p in the pound.
- Use salary sacrifice if it is offered. It saves National Insurance as well as Income Tax, so the same gross contribution costs you less take-home.
- Consider an ISA alongside the pension if you want the option of stopping before 57, since pensions are locked until then.
The honest summary
There is no single right answer, and anyone who gives you one without asking about your housing situation, your household and your income has skipped the parts that matter most.
What you can do is triangulate. Look at the Retirement Living Standards for a concrete sense of what lifestyles cost. Check your replacement rate for a sense of what your life costs. And run your actual pot and contributions through a projection to see where you currently land. Where those three points converge is a far better target than any rule of thumb.
Common questions
This guide is general information, not regulated financial advice. It does not recommend any product or provider. Figures change annually and tax rules can change. For personal recommendations, speak to an FCA-regulated financial adviser.