Your pension is above average. That means less than you think.

Search for the average pension pot by age and you will find the same handful of numbers repeated across dozens of sites. They almost all come from one place, the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey, and they are almost all reported in a way that makes them useless to you. Two problems, both fixable, and one of them changes the figures by about a quarter.

There are two average pension pots, and everyone quotes the wrong one

ONS publishes median private pension wealth two ways. One is the median among people who actually hold a pension. The other is the median across everyone in the age group, including those with nothing. Both are honest; they answer different questions. The first tells you what a typical saver has. The second tells you what a typical person has.

The gap is enormous, because a large minority have no private pension at all. Among 55 to 64 year olds, 21% have none, which drags the everyone-included median down from £176,977 to £111,477. At 35 to 44 the two are £50,730 and £24,402. At 25 to 34, where only 70% have started, they are £24,145 and £7,706.

“Almost every article picks the higher number and calls it what a typical person that age has. It is not. It is what a typical person who already saves has.”

Which one you should measure yourself against depends on what you are asking. If you want to know whether you are saving as much as other savers, use the first. If you want to know where you stand in the population, use the second. If you are trying to work out whether you will be alright, neither is the right tool, for reasons we will come to.

The second problem: these are 2022 pounds

The most recent published round of the Wealth and Assets Survey covers April 2020 to March 2022. It was released in January 2025, and the round after it, covering April 2022 to March 2024, has no announced publication date. So this is the current data, and it will stay current for a while yet.

It is also, unavoidably, old money. Prices have risen roughly 28% between the middle of that survey window and now. Republishing the raw figures, as almost every site does, understates them by about a quarter. Every number in this article has been restated in today's prices using ONS CPIH: the raw median for everyone aged 55 to 64 is £86,800, and the same purchasing power today is £111,477, a difference of £24,677.

One honest caveat. This is a purchasing-power restatement, not a nowcast. It says what the 2020 to 2022 distribution is worth in today's money. It does not claim to know what people hold this morning, because pension pots move with markets and gilt yields rather than with the price of groceries. It is the right correction for comparing yourself against the published distribution, and it is not a prediction.

What the median pot actually buys

This is where the tables stop and the useful part begins. Take the median for 55 to 64 year olds who have a pension, £176,977, and draw 4% a year from it. That is £7,079. Add the full new State Pension of about £12,548 and the total is £19,627 before tax, or £18,216 after it.

The Retirement Living Standards put a minimum retirement for one person at £13,900 a year, a moderate one at £32,700, and a comfortable one at £45,400, all assuming the home is owned outright. So the typical pension holder approaching retirement clears the minimum and falls £14,484 short of moderate. The typical person that age, on the everyone-included median, lands at about £16,120 after tax.

“The average is not a target. It is a description of a country that is collectively not saving enough.”

The gap that never makes the headline

One split is worth pulling out, because a single median hides it completely. Among 55 to 64 year olds who hold a private pension, the median man has £249,026 and the median woman has £135,108. That is a gap of £113,917 at exactly the point where there is no time left to close it by saving.

If you are half of a couple, this is the argument for looking at both pensions as one household picture rather than two separate scores. The household is what has to fund the retirement, and the person with the smaller pot is usually the one who lives longer.

So what do you do with a number like this?

Use it for context, then throw it away. Knowing you are above or below the median is genuinely useful once, as a reality check, and useless as a target. It tells you how you compare with a group that mostly will not reach a moderate retirement. Passing them is not the same as passing.

• Check where you actually sit, using your age rather than a national figure that lumps a 28-year-old in with a 62-year-old.
• Count the whole household, not just the bigger pension. Property equity and savings are part of the same answer, and ONS counts them too.
• Then replace the comparison with a projection. The only question that matters is whether your money lasts to the age you plan to, at the income you want.

Then do the part the comparison cannot do. Work out what income your pot actually supports, at the age you want to stop, and what you would need to put in to close any gap. That is a different question from how you compare with the neighbours, and it is the only one with a useful answer.

All figures here come from the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey, April 2020 to March 2022, restated with ONS CPIH, and the Retirement Living Standards published by Pensions UK. This is information, not financial advice, and it is not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Your own position depends on your income, your other assets and when you want to stop working.