Pensions are strange things.
We’re expected to make sensible decisions about something that might not happen for another 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years, using money we’d quite reasonably like to spend on things happening now.
There’s the holiday you’ve been dreaming about, with sun on your shoulders and sand between your toes. The kitchen begging for a new lick of paint. The boiler singing enthusiastically in all the wrong notes. The little things that make life feel better now. And somewhere in the middle of all that, someone asks you to think about what you’ll need when you’re 75.
No wonder retirement keeps getting bumped down the list.
For Pension Awareness Week 2026, we sat down with Vicky Reynal, award-winning Financial Psychotherapist, to look at the psychology behind our pension habits. Because sometimes, the thing standing between you and a healthier retirement isn’t a lack of information.
It’s your brain.
Here are five things Vicky wants you to know.
What are you actually avoiding when you avoid your pension? Because retirement isn’t just a number on a spreadsheet.
It can mean ageing. Losing your working identity. Having less money. Being dependent on other people. Not knowing what life looks like when nobody asks, “So, what do you do?”
As Vicky puts it:
“We’re not avoiding making a pension contribution, we’re avoiding thinking about a future us who feels less relevant and potentially more dependent on others.”
Oof. That’s quite a lot for a pension statement to unpack, but recognising what’s underneath the avoidance can make it easier to do something about it. If the thought of retirement makes you anxious, naming the anxiety is a start.
After all, you can’t really tackle a fear you’re pretending is just an unopened email.
And with 3 in 4 of us not currently on track to afford the retirement we want, there’s a pretty good reason to stop avoiding the conversation.
A quick exercise: Picture yourself on an ordinary Tuesday when you’re 75. Not your 75th birthday with a three tier red velvet cake. Not some glossy retirement advert where you’re inexplicably sailing around the Mediterranean in linen.
Just a Tuesday. Where are you? What are you doing? Who’s there?
If your brain has responded with a loading wheel, you’re not broken. Vicky explains that our future selves can feel psychologically distant from who we are today. In other words, future you can feel like a stranger, and it’s difficult to prioritise someone you barely know.
So give future you a bit more detail: give them a face. A place. A Tuesday. Maybe even a decent lunch. The more real that person becomes, the easier it is to understand why putting money aside for them matters.
Saving for retirement in general can feel abstract, but saving for your ordinary Tuesday is a little harder to ignore.
There’s one particular problem with retirement: it can feel very far away. And the problem with today is that it’s happening right now.
And today has excellent marketing.
There’s dinner. A new coat. A weekend away. A suspiciously expensive little coffee that somehow costs £5.20. There are approximately 47 things competing for your attention before breakfast.
Meanwhile, retirement is standing 30 years away whispering, “Hello? Remember me?”
As Vicky puts it:
“The present shouts whilst the future whispers.”
That’s present bias, which is a fancy way to explain our tendency to favour rewards we can have now over rewards we have to wait for. So if retirement keeps losing an argument against a nice meal, it doesn’t mean you’re terrible with money… your brain is just very enthusiastic about immediate gratification.
The trick is to make saving less dependent on willpower in the first place, because if your retirement plan relies on Future You remembering to make a sensible decision while Present You is eyeing up the menu at that new restaurant on the high street, we may have found a flaw in the business model.
So, instead, make the sensible choice the easy choice.
Automating your saving means you don’t have to make the decision from scratch every payday. You decide once, then let the money move before you’ve had a chance to spend it on something considerably more exciting.
It’s the financial equivalent of putting your trainers by the front door. You’re not relying on becoming a new, highly motivated person every morning. You’re just making it harder for yourself to ignore the good decision.
And when it comes to your pension, that can mean setting up contributions straight from your salary, so saving for future you happens alongside everything else, rather than waiting for whatever happens to be left at the end of the month.
Because, let’s be honest, there’s rarely a lot left at the end of the month.
“I’m bad with money.”
“I’m not an investor.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“I’ll deal with it when I earn more.”
We pick up ideas about money surprisingly early, from parents, our childhoods, even from things people once said while reaching for the mayo at the dinner table. And especially from watching the adults around us worry, argue, avoid or obsess over money.
Eventually, those ideas can start to sound less like things we’ve learned and more like facts about who we are.
Vicky says:
“A lot of us haven’t been given a financial roadmap. We have to figure it out as we go along and we don’t think we’re good at it.”
So next time you catch yourself thinking, I’m just rubbish at this, just remember you might not be rubbish at it, you might simply never have been shown how.
The good news is that saving for retirement doesn’t require a personality transplant. Start by finding out what your workplace offers. Check what you’re already paying in, whether your employer contributes, and whether you can increase your contribution.
Then make one decision. Increase it a little. Set up an extra contribution. Or simply book some time to understand what you’ve already got.
You don’t need to know everything. You just need to give future you a fighting chance.
Pensions can feel complicated, can’t they? There’s jargon. There are choices. There’s the fear of picking the wrong thing and discovering 25 years later that you have somehow made a catastrophic administrative blunder.
So doing nothing can feel reassuring, except there’s a catch: doing nothing is also a decision.
Vicky sees this fear regularly:
“They’re afraid of getting it wrong, losing control and regretting their choices.”
The problem is that waiting for the perfect moment to understand your pension can quietly turn into years of waiting. The earlier you start putting money aside, the longer it has the opportunity to grow. So “ Eh, I’ll sort it eventually” can be a surprisingly expensive plan.
You don’t need to have everything figured out today, but you do need to start somewhere.
There isn’t a magic sentence that will make retirement suddenly feel exciting. Sorry.
However, understanding why we avoid our pensions can make it easier to do something about it. Maybe you’re avoiding the future, maybe future you feels like a stranger, maybe today keeps winning, maybe you’ve inherited some unhelpful money beliefs, or, maybe you’re waiting for the mythical moment when you’ll finally feel 100% sure you’re doing the right thing.
You probably won’t, and that’s okay.
The goal isn’t to become a completely different person who wakes up excited to check their pension, it’s to make a few decisions today that give the person you’ll become more options tomorrow.
Vicky joined us for Pension Awareness Week to talk about the psychology behind our retirement decisions, why our brains keep choosing today over tomorrow, and what we can actually do about it. Watch the recap below.
Watch Vicky Reynal’s top retirement tips here.
And if you’re part of the LGPS and have access to a Shared Cost AVC, you can also start putting extra money aside directly from your salary, with tax and National Insurance relief helping your contributions go further.
£100 from your take-home pay can put £138.75 into your pot, before any investment growth.
Future you might not know exactly what they’re doing on that Tuesday in 30 years’ time, but they’ll probably be quite pleased you thought about them. Start here.