Pension Coverage 2024

It would also be useful to know the adequacy of the pension provision already in place and average contribution levels to DC pensions. The average pension fund at retirement is still just over 100k.
 
See "The average pension fund in Ireland matures at around €107,000." in thepensionstore web site :7reasons why your pension fund isn't as big as it should be.
I cannot copy the link...
and
"The average pension in Ireland is €111,000 in 2024" in the nationalpensionhelpline website.
 
To be honest, I wouldn't really trust either of those sites for such information. Especially the latter which misleads many people into thinking that it's some sort of official Government site. Several Askaboutmoney posters have cited it (and incorrect/misleading info) because they fell into this trap. E.g.:
 
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@ClubMan - I've searched in vain over the years for the answer to this question. It seems that no statistical authority or industry group compiles it which is a real shame. Anyway I tend not to trust surveys of pension savers or recipients all that much as people are often ignorant of or reticent about their financial situation.

Anyway this Revenue data from 2019 shows about 800k tax units (so some married couples) making an average of €3.7k pension contributions annually each. I completely trust the Revenue data btw. CSO show about 2m private sector employees and self employed in 2019 who could have been making contributions against the 800k tax units, which is probably 900k-1m individuals when you account for married couples. It's very hard to know how long people actually contribute for. Some do it their entire lives, many start late in life, some are patchy, and some make no contributions at all. But I'm going to assume something like a 25-year average contribution span who actually make contributions.

Pension saving of €4k per year (assume no inflation) gets you €145k after 25 years if you assume a 3% real return and €190k after 25 years if you assume a 5% real return.

So I think that estimates you see online of around €110k-€120k are on the low side and designed to hook people in and it's probably closer to

Of course median and mean will differ a lot as this distribution will have a long right tail.

Anyway I think it's plausible that the average Irish worker making pension contributions is on track for something between €150k and €200k in today's money at retirement.



Finally, to give a practical example someone who saved a nominal $2k every year since 1999 and put it in the S&P500 (net 100bps of fees) would have $163k after 25 years. These pension contributions would have been not large by any metric but would have produced a pension pot today well above what the industry claims.
 
Interesting... i had no idea. Thanks!
 
How many pensions does the average person have?
 
How many pensions does the average person have?
It’s a good point. Some people have multiple pensions from previous employments. The industry nor the CSO nor anyone else can match all these schemes to a single person.

My own estimate higher up the thread is that the typical DC scheme or schemes per retiree at retirement is higher than industry suggests.

The only way is up for this number due to rising pension coverage, rising wages, and rising equity prices.