Perimenopause and Pension Planning: Protecting Your Financial Future During a Career Disruption
Perimenopause can affect career continuity and earnings, which in turn affects your pension. Learn how to protect your pension and plan for the long term during this transition.
Why Perimenopause Is a Pension Planning Moment
Most women enter perimenopause in their mid-to-late forties, a stage of life that sits roughly 15 to 20 years before the standard UK pension access age. That gap makes midlife one of the most important windows for pension planning, because contributions made now have significant time to grow. Yet perimenopause can disrupt the very career continuity that pension contributions depend on. Reduced hours, career pauses, voluntary redundancy, or lower earnings caused by unmanaged symptoms can all leave gaps in pension provision that are difficult to recover later. Being aware of this connection is the first step to addressing it.
How Career Disruption Affects Pension Pots
In workplace pension schemes, contributions are typically calculated as a percentage of salary. If perimenopause leads you to reduce your hours, take unpaid leave, or move to a lower-paid role, your employer contributions will decrease accordingly. Defined contribution pensions, which are the most common type for women who started working in the 1980s onward, are directly affected by the total amount contributed over your working life and the investment returns on that sum. Every year of full contributions in midlife matters significantly more than years of contributions made in your twenties, because of the shorter compounding window. Protecting your career earnings during perimenopause is, in a real financial sense, protecting your retirement income.
Reviewing Your Pension Position Now
If you have not reviewed your pension position recently, now is the time. Obtain an up-to-date pension statement from each pension provider you have contributed to over your career. In the UK, the government's Pension Tracing Service can help locate lost or forgotten pension pots from previous employers. Check your State Pension forecast via the HMRC website, noting how many qualifying National Insurance years you have and how many more are needed to receive the full State Pension. If you have gaps in your NI record, voluntary contributions to fill those gaps can be cost-effective. A financial adviser who specialises in midlife women's financial planning can help you build a clear picture of where you stand.
Options for Increasing Pension Contributions
If your pension savings are below where you want them to be, there are several mechanisms to increase contributions. Salary sacrifice, where pension contributions are made from pre-tax salary, reduces income tax and National Insurance liability and is the most tax-efficient way to contribute for most employees. If your employer offers a matching scheme that you are not fully using, increasing your contributions to meet that match is, in effect, accepting additional pay. Self-employed women and those with career gaps can make personal contributions to a personal or SIPP pension. Annual contribution limits are generous, and unused allowance can be carried forward for three years under current rules.
Protecting Yourself if Your Work Changes
If perimenopause symptoms are severe enough to prompt a change in working arrangements, it is worth considering the pension implications before agreeing to a change. Moving from full-time to part-time, for instance, will reduce employer pension contributions unless your contract specifically protects them. Some employers will maintain full-time contribution levels as a reasonable adjustment for health reasons. Others may not, in which case understanding the long-term cost of that reduction is important for decision-making. If you are considering leaving employment altogether, taking pension planning advice before you go ensures you understand the full financial picture of that decision.
The Longer View
Perimenopause is a transition, not a permanent state. Many women find that symptoms peak and then ease, and that career engagement, energy, and earnings recover substantially on the other side. Managing symptoms well during perimenopause, through medical treatment, workplace adjustments, and lifestyle strategies, is the most direct route to minimising the career and pension disruption it causes. Taking financial advice sooner rather than later means that any gaps in pension provision can be identified and addressed while there is still time to act effectively. Planning in your late forties is significantly more impactful than attempting to catch up in your late fifties.
Related reading
Get your personalized daily plan
Track symptoms, match workouts to your day type, and build a routine that adapts with you through every phase of perimenopause.