Retirement and pensions may not seem like pressing issues for young adults, but saving early can make a huge difference to your future finances. However, due to coronavirus, many young people are facing financial uncertainty and saving for a pension isn’t exactly a high priority. If this applies to you, there are ways to save for a pension during COVID safely without worrying about losing money.

Whether you’re on a pension scheme through your workplace or you have a personal pension, the money you save now “will allow you to have a comfortable standard of living when you stop working,” Charlotte Jackson, Head of Pension Operations and Consumer Protection at the Money and Pension Service tells Bustle. “The sooner you start, the more your savings have time to grow and the easier it is to build up a good nest egg.”

How Do I Start Saving For Retirement?

Saving for a pension mainly occurs through investments in workplace pension schemes or personal pensions, where part of your salary is automatically stashed into a pension pot. You will also receive a state pension when you’re in your mid-to-late ’60s, which is £175.20 per week. However, you could also open a savings account specifically for money that you wish to put aside for retirement. By putting money aside when you can at a young age, you could end up with a comfy nest egg by the time you’re in your 60s.

You can do this simply through your bank account, or you could invest in an ISA (individual savings account). An ISA offers “tax-free interest payments” per Scottish Widows, and you can either put your money into a Cash ISA or a Stocks and Shares ISA.

A Cash ISA lets you create accounts where you can access your money at any time, or ones that lock away your money for a fixed term. A Stocks and shares ISA is where “you choose to put all or some of your money into a range of investments. With a Stocks and Shares ISA, “the value of your investments can do down as well as up, so you may get back less than you originally invested” due to the stock market.

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