Pension Help - Overwhelmed

[AdviceHunter]

I am 30 years old, work a decent job and have done since 18. I have never paid into a pension, apart from the state contributions (national insurance) during my 7 years employment in UK. I haven’t paid into any form of pension since moving abroad 3 years ago. I plan to return to UK within the next few years and settle.

I have a healthy savings account balance, but am conscious that this isn’t doing much for me as I earn virtually no interest. My plan is to put down a large deposit on a house in UK and aim to pay off the mortgage, at the same time starting to put money away for retirement.

I am quite overwhelmed but the research that I have done on the subject of pensions and planning for retirement, and subsequently have tried to ignore the problem. This obviously isn’t the way forward.

Any high level advice from the kind people of the forum? Should I open a private pension? Would it be sensible to aim for getting a house purchased first? In the short term is there any low-risk ways I could make my money work? Happy to share some more information if it would help.