More than half (56 per cent) of UK adults feel hopeful or excited about retirement, but only 16 per cent have worked out how much they will need to save and are confident they are on track to achieve it, research by PensionBee has shown.

The analysis highlighted a significant gap between retirement optimism and retirement planning, with 38 per cent of UK adults admitting they have no idea how much their retirement will cost.

Many savers were underestimating the cost of retirement, with more than three quarters (77 per cent) believing that a comfortable retirement would cost below Pensions UK's Retirement Living Standards benchmark of £45,400 a year for a single person.

Furthermore, among the 39 per cent who said they had left retirement planning too late, nearly a third (32 per cent) said they could not afford to engage with their pension sooner, far more than cited not knowing where to start (16 per cent) or pension complexity (12 per cent).

Gen Z was the most likely age group to feel anxious or overwhelmed about retirement, with 42 per cent saying they felt this way or actively avoid thinking about it, while almost half (48 per cent) of Gen X believed they had left retirement planning too late.

When asked how they would like their later life to look, spending more time with family (59 per cent) and travelling (55 per cent) in retirement were the most commonly cited ambitions.

PensionBee VP personal finance, Maike Currie, said: “Britons aren’t short of retirement dreams. What they’re short of is confidence that their finances will make those dreams a reality.

"That’s the irony in these findings. People are far more certain about the retirement they want than they are about their ability to pay for it.

“For plenty of people, the barrier is money, not motivation. No amount of encouragement can fix a month that doesn’t balance.

"When the choice feels like paying today’s bills or funding a retirement decades away, today will win.”

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