A generation raised on avocado toast jokes and zero-hours contracts has quietly decided it can’t afford to trust the government with its retirement. And honestly, who can blame them?
New research suggests that a significant chunk of under-35s in the UK are actively planning their finances as though the state pension simply won’t be there for them. Not as a pessimistic quirk, but as a rational, cold-eyed strategy.
The full state pension currently sits at £221.20 per week, and the qualifying age is already creeping upward, now set to hit 67 by 2028. There’s serious political debate about pushing it to 68 even sooner. For someone born in 2000, retirement feels less like a finish line and more like a mirage that keeps shifting further away.
Callum, 24, a graphic designer from Leeds, puts it bluntly: “I pay my National Insurance, but I genuinely don’t factor the state pension into any of my plans. It feels like paying into a raffle where the prize might not exist by the time they call my number.”
That sentiment is increasingly common. Rather than banking on a state safety net, younger workers are leaning into Lifetime ISAs, workplace auto-enrolment schemes, and even self-directed investing through platforms like Vanguard or Trading 212. Some are eyeing property. Others are building side incomes they hope to carry into old age.
The irony is that Gen Z, often written off as financially reckless, may actually be the most clear-eyed generation about retirement planning in decades. They just don’t expect anyone else to sort it for them.
The state pension was designed for a world where you worked for one employer, retired at 65, and died at 72. That world is gone.
The Office for Budget Responsibility has repeatedly flagged that an ageing population puts enormous strain on public finances. The triple lock, which protects pension increases, costs the Treasury billions annually and faces growing pressure from both sides of Parliament.
Whether Gen Z’s scepticism is justified or simply a product of institutional distrust is almost beside the point. They’re acting on it regardless. The real question is whether the government will eventually prove them wrong, or simply prove them right.
