Our biggest financial regrets

Household money

Updated on 06 May 2015 | 3 Comments

Divorce and not saving enough among our biggest regrets.

Saving too little and getting divorced are among the biggest financial regrets of the over-40s.

That's according to a new survey from specialist pensions provider Partnership, which also found that as we get older we become more concerned with saving specifically for a pension rather than just our general savings.

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Your biggest financial mistake

Around 61% of people felt that not saving enough was their biggest error, with 36% saying that they generally had not saved enough, and 25% responding that they had not paid enough into their pension.

A significant 13% of the vote picked getting married and subsequently divorced as their largest error, while 12% said that they most regretted putting money into an investment that didn’t perform as well as they thought it would.

Andrew Megson, Managing Director of Retirement at Partnership, said: “It appears that the two most common financial regrets relate to people taking no action at all rather than making an error because they took a huge gamble.”

What the results show is the importance of saving – and the importance of saving early – when considering both everyday savings and pension arrangements.

While 23% of people aged 40 to 50 said that not saving enough into their pension was their biggest regret, 29% of those between 51 and 60 thought it was their worst mistake. As the latter group is closer to reaching pension age, it seems that reality has hit home, although not saving enough in general was still overall their greatest concern.

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