[DamonHD]

In the UK the (usual) limit you can have in your pension fund is now £1m.

I would expect to have about 20 times whatever I wanted to live on per year, and that yearly amount would high enough above what I know is enough to be comfortable. The state pension should kick in something too.

However, I don't expect to completely retire at any point though legally I currently could in only 5 years' time (then another 10 years or so to state pension age). So if I'm not doing a reasonable amount of work and keeping my brain active at 70 I would be disappointed.

[pm90]

This is my thinking as well. I like to think I would be working in some capacity much beyond the current retirement age. One of the reasons I like to keep a healthy lifestyle is that I want to be physically and mentally capable of continuing to make useful contributions until the very end... and that last part really scares me, but that's another conversation.

[DamonHD]

What scares you? Mortality, or being able to keep being useful, or something else? (I'm not being flippant: I live next to a graveyard which reminds me that I'm not getting out of the first of those!)

[pm90]

I guess its a combination of Mortality and lack of independence/increasing dependence, while bodily functions slowly get less and less effective. I am very afraid of the idea of fading away. Perhaps I would be more comfortable if, e.g. I knew that my end would come at a very specific day and that I would remain healthy until then and the poof!

[DamonHD]

Then you should know the joke about the difference between an English actuary and a Russian actuary. The former tells you your life expectancy ie an age you might expect to die, whereas the latter gives you a date, time and place.

I suspect I'm somewhat older than you, and faults are already accumulating and have been significantly so for 20 years or more. I can see how it may eventually become too tiresome to carry on if some of the breakage can't be fixed. But there are often compensations...