A third enter retirement in debt

Retirement. You’ve paid off your mortgage, said goodbye to your colleagues for the last time and now it’s finally time to put your feet up and enjoy some well-deserved rest, free of commitments. That’s the ideal, anyway. Unfortunately, many retirees enter this stage of their lives with significant commitments hanging over their head, with research1 finding that a third of people now retire in debt. Worse still, 2021 retirees owe around a fifth more than last year’s cohort – around £20,650 on average. Forty percent have credit card debt, 31% still have outstanding mortgage payments, 17% are in their overdraft, while 8% have borrowed from family and friends.

1Key, 2021