Nearly a third (30%) of people aged between 45 and 54 believe visualising what they want their retirement to look like is the best motivation for retirement saving, research by Phoenix Insights has found.

This was the most popular motivator for mid-lifers, followed by regularly reviewing their expenses (26%) and planning with their spouse or long-term partner (22%).

More than a fifth (21%) set themselves clear goals for how much they wanted to save to stay motivated, while 11% spoke to friends and family about their plans.

However, Phoenix Insights found that recent cost-of-living pressures and increased interest rates had affected people’s ability to save for retirement, with 63% of 45-54 year olds saying their retirement saving had been impacted by rising prices and a further 20% by higher mortgage costs.

Despite these challenges, 72% of mid-lifers believed that it was "never too late" to start thinking about saving for retirement.

Commenting on the findings, head of research and analysis at Phoenix Insights, Patrick Thomson, said: "Saving for retirement may not have been top of people’s priorities in recent years amid cost-of-living pressures and rising interest rates, but it’s important people don’t overlook their long-term finances.

"The New Year provides a great prompt for people to take stock of how much they have saved and put plans in place to close any savings gap. And with inflation cooling in recent months, households might have some additional respite from the cost-of-living squeeze to enable this.

"For those in mid-life, it’s particularly important they start to plan ahead as many are not on track to achieve a decent retirement income. This generation is characterised by lower rates of final salary pensions than those preceding them, and they will also miss out from a lifetime of saving under auto enrolment.

"Just thinking about finances can often be the hardest part of retirement planning. It’s never too late to think about long-term saving, but the sooner this process is kick-started the better."

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