If the numbers don't work

Five levers, roughly in order of how much difference they make.

You've run the numbers and the answer is worse than you hoped. The money runs out at 84, or the income lands well below what you wanted, or the shortfall has a figure attached to it that you can't quite believe.

That is a genuinely useful thing to have found out, and finding it out at 52 is enormously better than finding it out at 67. This page is about what to do next.

There are only five levers

Every solution is one of these, or a combination:

Work longer
Save more
Spend less in retirement
Take more investment risk
Change what you're aiming at

They aren't equal. Some move the needle a great deal and some barely register, and the ordering surprises people.

Working longer does the most

It's the least popular answer and by some distance the most powerful, because it pulls three levers at once.

Each additional year of work means one more year of contributions, one more year of growth on the whole pot, and one fewer year the pot has to fund. That third effect is the one people underestimate, and it compounds with the other two.

Two or three years past your original date frequently transforms a projection that didn't work into one that does. It's worth running your own figures for one, two and three extra years before rejecting it, because the improvement is usually larger than intuition suggests.

And it doesn't have to be full-time. Reducing to three days for the last five years, rather than stopping dead, often achieves most of the benefit while giving you much of what you wanted from retiring. See Phased retirement.

Saving more works, and the size depends on your age

Obviously helpful, and worth being realistic about what's needed.

At 40, an extra £200 a month has decades to compound and makes a substantial difference. At 60, the same £200 a month for five years is £12,000 plus a little growth. Still worth doing, but it won't close a large gap on its own.

The nearer you are, the more the other levers matter relative to this one.

Where extra contributions punch above their weight: if your income sits between £100,000 and £125,140, or if you're a higher rate taxpayer who'll be a basic rate taxpayer in retirement, pension contributions are worth far more than their headline amount. See The 60% tax trap and Carry forward, which may let you use unused allowance from previous years.

Check the employer match first. If you're contributing below the level your employer will match, that's free money you're declining and it beats everything else on this page.

Spending less needs care

Reducing your target income makes any plan work, and it's the lever most easily abused, because it's the easiest to adjust on a spreadsheet.

The honest version of this lever isn't shaving the number until the projection turns green. It's separating what you must have from what you'd like, and finding out whether the plan covers the first. See Working out what you actually need.

Two things worth remembering. Real retirement spending isn't flat — it tends to run high in the active early years, fall through the middle, and rise at the end with care costs. And the State Pension covers a substantial part of most people's essentials, so "running out" usually means dropping to a baseline rather than having nothing.

Taking more risk is the weakest lever

It's the one people reach for first, and it deserves the most caution.

A higher expected return improves a projection immediately, on paper. What it doesn't do is guarantee anything, and the closer you are to needing the money, the less time there is to recover if it goes the other way.

Increasing risk to fix a shortfall five years from retirement is how a manageable problem becomes an unrecoverable one. If a fall would force you to work another five years anyway, you haven't solved the problem, you've made it conditional.

There is a legitimate version: someone who has been too cautious for their timescale, sitting in cash with twenty years to go, genuinely should be taking more risk. That's correcting an error, not reaching for return. See Risk and diversification.

Changing the goal

Sometimes the plan is fine and the target was never realistic. Retiring at 55 on a full income, on contributions started at 45, was not going to work regardless of what you do now.

Adjusting the destination isn't failure. It's the difference between a plan and a wish.

Three things that aren't on the list, and should be checked

Lost pensions. A surprising number of people are missing a pot they've forgotten. It costs an afternoon to check and occasionally changes the answer entirely. See Finding old pensions.

State Pension gaps. Filling a gap can add materially to your guaranteed income for life, and the payback on voluntary contributions is one of the best returns available anywhere. See Your State Pension.

Charges. If you're paying more than you need to across pensions and investments, reducing that is a permanent improvement to every future year, and it's the only variable you control with certainty. See What you actually pay.

None of these is a lever exactly. All three are free money that people leave on the table.

Your house

Two options exist and they're different in kind.

Downsizing releases capital from a home that's larger than you need. It's straightforward, the money is yours, and the costs are the transaction costs plus whatever you feel about leaving. It's a real plan and a great many people do it.

Equity release borrows against your home with nothing to repay until you die or move into care, with the interest rolling up. Modern products carry safeguards including a no-negative-equity guarantee, and there are situations where it's the right answer. It is also expensive over long periods because the debt compounds, it reduces what you leave behind considerably, and it can affect means-tested benefits.

It's regulated advice territory and it should never be a first response to a shortfall. If you're considering it, look at the other levers first, and take advice from someone qualified in it specifically.

What to actually do

Run your figures again with one lever at a time rather than all at once. Two more years of work. £200 a month more. £3,000 a year less spending. You'll quickly see which ones move your particular numbers and which barely register, and that tells you where to concentrate.

Then run the combination you'd actually accept.

If the gap is large and close, this is the point at which advice earns its fee — not to find a better investment, but because someone who does this daily will see options you won't, and the sequencing and tax decisions from here on are worth more than the fund selection.

This article is for general education only and isn't personal advice. Equity release in particular is a specialist area requiring qualified advice.