Published 11 June 2026 · By James Chandler · 7 min read

DB, DC and State Pension: how to track all three in one place

If you're a UK earner over 35, you almost certainly have more than one pension — and they probably look nothing alike. One is a pot. One is a promise. One comes from the government. Adding them up is harder than it sounds, and most finance apps don't even try.

I'm a finance analyst, and pensions are the part of personal net worth I see people get most wrong — not because they're careless, but because the three main types of UK pension are genuinely different animals. They're measured in different units. They pay out in different ways. And almost no budgeting app shows them together, so people end up with a vague sense of "I've got some pension somewhere" rather than a number.

Here's how to think about all three, put a sensible value on each, and see what they actually add up to in retirement income.

The three pensions most people have

By your late thirties, a typical UK working life has stacked up a mix. You might have a final-salary scheme from an employer you left a decade ago, a workplace pension you and your current employer pay into every month, and the State Pension building quietly in the background through your National Insurance record.

Defined Contribution (DC) — a pot of money

This is the modern default: workplace auto-enrolment pensions, SIPPs, and personal pensions. You and your employer pay in, the money is invested, and what you end up with is a pot — a balance, in pounds, that goes up and down with markets. Its value is simply whatever the pot is worth today. That makes DC the easiest of the three to read, and the one most likely to already appear on a statement you can check.

Defined Benefit (DB) — a promised income

Also called final-salary or career-average schemes. These are increasingly rare for new joiners but very common for people who worked in the public sector, large corporates, or older firms earlier in their careers. A DB scheme doesn't give you a pot — it promises to pay you a fixed annual income for life from a set retirement age, usually rising with inflation. The unit here isn't a balance, it's "£X per year, forever." That's worth a great deal, but it's hard to compare with a pot until you convert it.

State Pension — the government's promise

Funded by your National Insurance record, not invested in markets. For 2026/27 the full new State Pension is £241.30 a week — about £12,548 a year (gov.uk). You need roughly 35 qualifying years of NI contributions to get the full amount, and you can check your own forecast on the government's Check your State Pension service. Like DB, it's an income, not a pot — and it's bigger than most people realise.

Why this is so hard to see in one place

The problem is units. A DC pot is a balance. A DB scheme and the State Pension are annual incomes. You can't just add £180,000 to £6,000 a year to £12,548 a year and get a meaningful total — that's adding apples to two different kinds of orange.

Most apps respond to this by punting. Aggregators that focus on bank accounts often skip pensions entirely, because pension data is messy and rarely available through Open Banking. The ones that do include pensions usually only handle DC pots — the easy case — and quietly ignore DB and State Pension, which for many people are the larger share of their retirement. The result is a net worth figure that's missing the biggest long-term asset most households own.

Putting one number on each

To compare them, pick a single common unit. There are two honest ways to do it, and they're mirror images of each other.

Option A: turn the incomes into pot-equivalents

A reliable rule of thumb is to value a guaranteed annual income at roughly 20 times its yearly amount. So a £6,000-a-year DB pension is worth around £120,000 as a lump sum, and the State Pension's £12,548 is worth around £250,000. This "×20" multiple is deliberately conservative — it's the inverse of a 5% income assumption. Real DB transfer values (CETVs) vary widely, often landing anywhere from 20 to 40 times the annual income depending on the scheme and your age, so treat ×20 as a sensible floor, not a precise figure. (Transferring out of a DB scheme is a serious, often irreversible decision — this is about valuing it, not cashing it in.)

Option B: turn the pot into income

The other direction is usually more useful, because retirement is something you live on year by year. Convert your DC pot into a sustainable annual income using the 4% rule — the idea, from the well-known Trinity Study, that you can withdraw about 4% of an invested pot in the first year and adjust for inflation thereafter with a strong chance of it lasting 30 years. So a £180,000 pot supports roughly £7,200 a year. Then add your DB income and State Pension, which already come as annual figures.

A worked example

Look at that DC pot on its own and £7,200 a year feels frightening. Add the DB scheme and the State Pension and the picture is completely different — £25,748 a year before any further contributions or growth. That's the whole point of seeing them together: each stream in isolation tells a misleading story.

It works backwards too. If Sarah's target is £50,000 a year, she already has £18,548 covered by DB and State Pension. The gap of £31,452 is what her DC pot needs to fund — and at 4%, that means a pot of about £786,000. Knowing that the State Pension and an old DB scheme have done a third of the work changes how much she needs to save, and how hard.

Why tracking them together actually matters

Three reasons it's worth the effort to keep all three in one view rather than three separate statements in three drawers.

• You set the right savings target. Plenty of people over-save out of anxiety because they're only looking at their DC pot, or under-save because they've forgotten an old DB scheme exists. The honest number is the sum.
• You can see the trajectory, not just today. A pot grows with contributions and markets; a DB income usually rises with inflation; the State Pension rises with the triple lock. Projecting all three forward to your retirement age is the only way to know if you're on track.
• You make better decisions. Whether to overpay the mortgage or add to the pension, when you can realistically retire, how much risk you still need to take — all of these depend on the combined picture, not one slice of it.

The annoying part is keeping it current

Doing this once on the back of an envelope is easy. Keeping it current is the bit that defeats most people. Your DC pot moves with markets every day. The State Pension figure changes every April. Your DB entitlement grows as you accrue more service or as inflation increases are applied. The number you worked out last year is already wrong.

That's the gap Wealthly fills. It handles all three pension types properly — DC pots with contribution and growth projections, DB and State Pension as inflation-linked incomes — and rolls them into one retirement figure using the same 4% logic above, with a safe-withdrawal-rate slider if you want to be more or less cautious than 4%. It sits alongside your property, savings, ISAs, vehicles, and debts, so your pensions are part of your net worth instead of a separate mystery.

If you want to sketch the combined picture in a couple of minutes first, the free Wealthly net worth calculator includes a pension field so you can see how your retirement savings sit against everything else.

More reading: Your real UK net worth: 5 assets every other app misses · Land Registry HPI vs Zoopla: why your home's value is wrong · Best net worth tracker UK: Emma, Snoop, Aureli & Wealthly compared