How long will my retirement be?

Working out how long your retirement will be

To know how much you need to save in your pension, you’ll also need to know how long your retirement is going to last.

But that can feel almost impossible to work out. Now, with flexibility over accessing your retirement savings and longer life expectancies, your retirement could last anywhere from 20 to 40 years or more. And of course, none of us know exactly how long we’re going to live.

That said, a few factors will influence how long your retirement will be. Considering these can give you a rough idea of when you can retire, and how much you’ll need to save. 

5 things that could affect the length of your retirement

The length of your retirement will be individual to you, and depend on a range of factors. Here are a few to think about.

1. Your retirement age

In 2025/26, you can usually access your pension savings from 55 (rising to 57 from 2028). 

There’s also the State Pension age, which in 2025/26 is 66 (set to rise to 67 by 2028). From then, you can start claiming the State Pension if you’ve made sufficient National Insurance contributions (NICs).

However, while these ages dictate when you can access your pensions, there’s no set retirement age in the UK.

It’s up to you when to retire, provided that you’ve saved enough to support yourself.

2. Increasing life expectancies

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), average life expectancy for people who turned 65 between 2022 and 2024 was 86.2 years for females and 83.7 for males.

So, if you retire as soon as you can access your pensions from 55 (rising to 57 from 2028), you’d expect your retirement to last around 30 years on average.

Many of us are living longer, too. The ONS life expectancy calculator shows that 65-year-old men have a one-in-four chance of living to 92. For women, that’s a one-in-four chance of reaching 95. That might mean a retirement of around 40 years.

Rising life expectancies could mean more years in retirement. That’ll require larger savings, especially if you want to retire in your 50s.

3. Your lifestyle

There are two lifestyle elements that can determine how long your retirement will be:

1. How much it costs - travelling the world or making luxury purchases will very likely cost more than learning new hobbies or spending time at home with your family. The more expensive your lifestyle, the quicker you’ll spend your savings.
2. How ‘healthy’ you are - if you eat well, exercise, and don’t drink excessively or smoke, you’ll likely live longer. The healthier your lifestyle, the longer you might live, and the more savings you’ll need. 

4. The cost of living

Inflation - which measures the speed at which prices are rising - will reduce your savings’ purchasing power over time. Effectively, if inflation has been at 2% for a year, what cost £100 last year would cost £102 today. 

This effect becomes more pronounced over time. So, you can imagine why it matters over the course of a decades-long retirement.

The table below shows how much you’d have needed in your pension in January 2026 to have the spending power of £300,000 from 20, 30, and 40 years ago:

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The cost of living effectively doubled over 30 years, and tripled over 40 years in this period. That’s why it’s important to keep the cost of living in mind when saving into your pension. Otherwise, you could face a shortfall.

Use the PensionBee Inflation Calculator to see how your pension could be affected by inflation throughout the course of your retirement.

5. The size of your pension

If you retire with not enough saved to fund your lifestyle, you risk depleting your savings too soon.

Pensions UK’s Retirement Living Standards are a useful benchmark for how far your savings might go. 

These estimate how much you’d need each year for a minimum, moderate, or comfortable retirement.

The figures are only a guide, and the annual cost will vary depending on how you choose to spend your time. Even so, they can provide a good starting point for thinking about what's in your pot and whether it’s enough to support your ideal lifestyle.

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How to make retirement last longer

With all this in mind, you may be unsure whether you have the money to retire when and how you want.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take now to work out how long you can afford to be retired. They could even help you give up work sooner and make your retirement last longer. Here are a couple of things to consider.

Create a retirement plan

Think about when you want to retire and what you want to do with your time. From there, you can look at your total savings and how long they might last, depending on your goals.

Our retirement checklist can give you an idea of what to think about before you give up work.

Review your pensions

Next, you can check whether your pension contributions will be enough to build the pot you need. You could use the PensionBee Pension Calculator to help you see what your savings could be worth at retirement. 

Explore semi-retirement

If you have an ideal retirement age but you’re concerned about having enough to support yourself, you could look at semi-retiring.

This typically involves reducing your working hours and phasing into retirement. It often means you're still earning an income from working while drawing some of your pension.

This can help your savings last a bit longer. You also get the chance to dip your toe into retired life and see how much your lifestyle might cost when you’re no longer working.

A successful retirement starts with good planning

Retirement planning could be the key to achieving what you want in later life. By thinking about what you want to do and how much you have, you can make choices now that help you reach your later-life goals.

A PensionBee pension could help you achieve the retirement you want. With a range of plans to suit your needs, you can: 

• combine eligible pensions into one pot;
• view your savings quickly and easily in your account (your ‘BeeHive’) via the app or website; and
• access your money with ease and flexibility (from 55, rising to 57 from 2028).

Find out more about the PensionBee pension to see whether it could be right for you.

Risk warning

As always with investments, your capital is at risk. The value of your investment can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. This information should not be regarded as financial advice.