Will I be okay in retirement? What 3,000 financial plans reveal

Why retirement, not wealth, is the question almost everyone asks first

TL;DR. Retirement was the single most common primary goal in Warren's data (31%), ahead of buying a home, growing savings, or paying off debt.

Across 3,000 anonymised Warren plans, retirement was the primary goal for 31% of people, more than buying a home (22%), growing their savings and investments (20%), or paying off debt (14%). People rarely arrive wanting a spreadsheet. They arrive wanting reassurance.

Many planning tools still assume people arrive wanting to grow money. The data points somewhere calmer and more universal: people mostly want to know their future is covered. That's a different starting point, and it changes what a useful plan looks like.

"On track" isn't a feeling, it's a number you can actually check

TL;DR. In Warren's data, 67% of people with a retirement target are projected to be on track, and around a third (33%) are projected to fall short of their own target, by a median of roughly £260,000. These are modelled scenarios, not predictions.

Being on track isn't a mystery reserved for experts. It's the answer to one comparison: will your future income cover the life you want when you stop working? To make that real, you need three things: a target (roughly what you'd want to spend each year), a projection (what your pensions and savings are likely to provide), and the gap or surplus between them.

You don't have to invent the target. In the UK, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) publishes Retirement Living Standards, benchmarks for what different lifestyles cost. For one person, excluding housing:

For two people sharing a household, the equivalents are roughly £21,600, £43,900 and £60,600, lower per person because many costs are shared. Some of that target is covered by the State Pension: for 2026/27, the full new State Pension is £241.30 a week, about £12,548 a year. That covers most of a minimum lifestyle for one person, but falls well short of moderate or comfortable. The gap is the part private pensions and savings usually fill.

These benchmarks are general guides, not a recommendation for your situation.

So when Warren projects that around a third of people with a target are behind it, by a median of roughly £260,000, that gap isn't mysterious. It's the modelled distance between someone's current trajectory and the lifestyle they told us they want.

That number can sound alarming, so put it in perspective. £260,000 isn't a bill due tomorrow. It's the total gap spread across what could be a 25 or 30 year retirement. Broken down, it becomes a monthly savings question rather than a catastrophe, and the earlier you spot it, the smaller that monthly figure needs to be. A shortfall found at 35 is a very different problem from the same shortfall found at 60.

Financial uncertainty doesn't have an age, and the data proves it

TL;DR. Warren users are spread almost evenly from 25 to 54, with a roughly even split across the four main age bands and a smaller 18-25 group. The average age is 43.

You might expect retirement uncertainty to belong mostly to people nearing the end of their careers. It doesn't. Across Warren users the concern shows up at every age: roughly 23% are 25 to 34, 23% are 35 to 44, 24% are 45 to 54, and another 24% are 55 or over. Only the under-25s, about 6%, are a small group. A 30-year-old and a 56-year-old can carry exactly the same question.

A caveat worth being honest about: these figures describe the people who choose to use Warren, not the UK as a whole. People who seek out a planning tool are already thinking about this. So treat the numbers as a window into the worried-but-motivated, not a national average. If you feel behind, you're in very ordinary company.

Why retirement planning is rarely a one-person decision

TL;DR. 74% of Warren users plan their finances as a household; only 26% plan solo.

Three in four people plan their finances as a household, yet most tools still treat money as a one-person exercise, asking you to model your future as if a partner, shared bills, and joint goals don't exist.

Retirement especially rewards a household view. As the PLSA figures show, two people sharing costs need less per person than one alone. When each partner retires, how pensions combine, and what "enough" looks like together are usually better decided jointly than in parallel. It's one of the things worth covering when you map out what a good financial plan includes.

What people actually do first: stability before strategy

TL;DR. The most common first step in people's action plans was building an emergency fund (21%), then increasing pension contributions (16%) and starting an ISA (10%).

Here's the most practical pattern in the data, and it pushes back gently against a common assumption. People imagine getting their finances in order means picking investments. In reality, the most common first step isn't a clever move at all. It's getting stable. A large share fall into "other," so this is the order of the most common named steps, not a universal sequence.

That order is practical, and it mirrors a well-known UK rule of thumb for getting your money on a stable footing:

1. A safety buffer first. An emergency fund, often cited as roughly three to six months of essential outgoings, means an unexpected bill doesn't derail everything else.
2. Pension contributions may come next. Increasing contributions, especially where an employer matches them, can be a useful long-term option to explore.
3. Investing for other goals may follow. Tax-efficient accounts like ISAs (up to £20,000 a year) come into play once the foundations are solid.

The takeaway: if your finances feel chaotic, you're not behind for wanting stability before sophistication. Stability is the plan, for most people, for a while. If you're at the very beginning, our guide to how to start financial planning is a good next read.

This describes a common general approach, not personalised advice. The right order for you depends on your circumstances.

A practical example of checking where you stand

Take someone we'll call Priya, 38, earning £42,000, paying into a workplace pension, with a partner who does the same.

• Target: a moderate lifestyle for two, roughly £43,900 a year combined.
• Projection: two full State Pensions (about £25,100 a year between them) plus their workplace pensions.
• The check: the State Pension covers a chunk, but not all, of the target. The question becomes whether their workplace pots are on course to fill the rest, and if not, how much extra per month would.

Priya doesn't need to panic or overhaul her life. Following the pattern most people do, she'd make sure she has a safety buffer, then look at her pension contributions. A small adjustment now can do the work a much larger scramble would do later. That's the entire point of checking early.

This is an illustration, not advice. Your own numbers will differ.

Where Warren fits, and where it doesn't

Warren is an AI-powered planning tool built to help with the exact question most people arrive with: "Will I be okay?" It turns the information you share into scenarios and projections, brings your pensions and savings into one view, and shows you whether you're on track, including the size of any shortfall and possible areas to explore, usually starting with stability rather than complexity. It doesn't provide financial advice or recommendations, and it won't tell you what to do.

The initial conversation typically takes around 10 minutes. That's a starting point, not a finished document. Your plan is something you build on over time as your circumstances change. It's designed for households, not just individuals, and for people who want a clearer view of where they stand. Not for people who have it all figured out, but for people who want to.

The takeaways

• Retirement, not building money, is the most common reason people start planning.
• "Okay" has a number behind it: the PLSA's rough one-person benchmarks of £13,400 / £31,700 / £43,900 a year are a useful yardstick.
• Around a third of people with a target are projected to fall short of it, but that gap is checkable, not mysterious, and smaller the earlier you find it.
• Uncertainty spans every age, and most people plan as a household, which can lower the per-person bar.
• Most plans start with stability, like an emergency fund, before anything else.