The way in which millions of us are told to save for retirement is setting us up for failure – and a frugal old age. 

I fear that unless we change the current model now, few will be able to afford the kind of retirement they want.

We live under the delusion that pension saving is like a marathon.

You start when you enter the workplace, save steadily month after month and at the end of it all you should have enough to fund a good retirement.

It sounds sensible, except that increasingly that model simply doesn't reflect the world we are now living in.

Working life is not steady. An unbroken record of work from leaving education to retirement is increasingly the exception, not the rule.

And under the current system whereby you save a fixed percentage of your earnings into a workplace pension every month, that means millions will end up with retirement savings riddled with holes. 

The risk now starts at the beginning of careers.

Nearly one million young people aged 16 to 24 in the United Kingdom are not in education, employment or training – known as Neets. And this number is rising. 

The impact on their future earnings is profound. By not working from the age of 18, a Neet can miss out on up to £300,000 of lifetime earnings even if they get a job at the age of 24.

Less talked about is the impact on pensions. A 22-year-old who is out of work for even just a year will have £31,500 less in their pension by retirement as a result. 

This assumes they earn £35,000 over their working life and have total contributions into their pension of 10 per cent, according to calculations by investment platform Bestinvest.

In mid-career, a new set of reasons for taking a break from work and thus

creating a pension gap crops up – having children, looking after elderly relatives, suffering poor health or redundancy.

Then, in a worrying trend, growing numbers of workers in their 50s and 60s report they are struggling to find work as they come up against ageist AI systems used in recruitment.

Indeed, AI is transforming almost all jobs at such a pace that disruption to careers is inevitable. 

We're entering one of most tumultuous eras for work as AI reshapes nearly every profession. Many jobs will become defunct, retraining will be essential and the risk of redundancy ever present.

Even workers who are not forced to take time out might find they want or need a breather as the rising retirement age lengthens a typical working life and pushes retirement further out of reach.

Career gaps are inevitable. But there is a solution. We need to stop thinking of pension saving as that marathon I mentioned earlier and get used to saving sprints whenever we can.

If you get a bonus, an inheritance, a redundancy payment or a pay rise – divert a chunk into your pension.

And when you can afford to do so, ramp up your pension contributions to make up for inevitable periods when you cannot. I think of these sprints as like

Grandmother's Footsteps. Remember that old playground game where one player who is nominated 'grandmother' faces the wall and the others must run towards her while her back is turned.

But Grandmother can turn around at any moment and if she catches you running, you're out of the game.

When Grandmother is facing the wall, you run. When you're in work and can afford to, have a pension sprint – pile in as much as you can.

Then when Grandmother turns her gaze on you and you're forced to pause, you've built in enough slack that your retirement will still be on track. You could even be better off.

Say if you took five years out of work at age 35. By retirement you would have £75,800 less in your pension, using the same assumptions as before. 

But if you ramped up your pension contributions by saving twice as much for five years before your gap, your pension fund would actually increase by £20,900.

Similarly, if you were out of work for a year at age 55, you would have £9,880 less in your pension by retirement, assuming you earn £55,000 a year. 

But if you saved twice as much the year before, your pension fund would actually increase by £490. Steady and slow wins the race? Dream on. Get sprinting.

rachel.rickard@dailymail.co.uk