Is £1 million enough to retire on in the UK?

The 4% rule of thumb turns £1,000,000 into about £40,000 a year. With the full new State Pension (£12,548) the total is about £52,548 before tax.

That clears the single-person Comfortable standard (£45,400) with room to spare. For a couple, where the Comfortable standard is £62,700 and there may be two State Pensions, the same pot covers the benchmark comfortably too.

Retire at 55 and the pot has to pay twelve years before the State Pension starts at 67. Setting aside £150,576 for the State Pension's share of those years leaves about £849,424, or about £33,977 a year at 4%.

Note that the earliest age you can usually take a private pension rises from 55 to 57 on 6 April 2028, so retiring at 55 after that date needs money outside pensions, such as ISAs, for the first years.

At this size, how you draw the money matters as much as how much there is. The tax-free portion of pensions is capped: the lump sum allowance is £268,275 for most people. Income above £50,270 is taxed at the higher rate, and above £100,000 the Personal Allowance starts to disappear.

Unused pensions are due to come into inheritance tax from April 2027, which is changing how many people think about spending pensions versus other savings. These are exactly the questions a regulated adviser is for.

How these figures are worked out: the yearly spending figures are the Pensions UK Retirement Living Standards (2026), which describe what a single person spends after tax. The full new State Pension is £12,548 a year (£241.30 a week in 2026/27) from age 67. The pot figures divide the shortfall by a 4% yearly withdrawal — a widely quoted rule of thumb, not a guarantee — and add the full State Pension for every year you retire before 67. No investment growth, inflation or tax is modelled. These are national benchmarks, not a projection for you.