5 legal strategies to increase your pension or retire early

The following legal strategies show which steps are realistic, how to optimize your retirement planning, and which methods for early retirement actually work.

Strategy 1: Understand and calculate your pension gap

Before getting started, you need to know: How large is my pension gap?
A pension gap calculator helps you see how much money will be missing in retirement if you rely only on the state pension.

Key points:

• State pensions have been declining in relation to income for years.
• Many people underestimate the difference between net salary and future pension payments.
• Without private retirement planning, a significant gap often remains.

If you want to calculate your pension gap, you can use any pension calculator to see how much you would need to invest monthly to maintain your standard of living.

Strategy 2: Increase your pension points

For the state pension, pension points are crucial. The system is clear: the more points you have, the higher your pension.

Legal ways to increase your pension points:

• Higher income subject to social security contributions (e.g., salary increases, full-time instead of part-time).
• Voluntary contributions to the state pension system.
• Compensation payments to avoid pension reductions.
• Recognition periods: childcare or caregiving periods.

Even if these steps seem small, they can significantly increase your monthly pension over the long term.

Smart investing: The most important factor for early retirement

Anyone wanting to retire early needs a financial cushion.
Long-term investing helps - and this does not mean “quick money,” but systematic wealth building.

Effective strategies:

• regular ETF savings plans
• broadly diversified investments instead of individual stocks
• automatic monthly investments
• disciplined wealth building over decades

Many investors use online simulation tools to model realistic long-term scenarios.

Tricks for early retirement - legal and realistic

The internet is full of nonsense about “secret tricks.” The only legal and realistic methods for early retirement are:

• dramatically increasing the savings rate (e.g., 20–30% of net income)
• minimizing unnecessary spending (avoiding “lifestyle inflation”)
• building passive income
• avoiding consumer debt
• starting to invest early at age 20, 25 or 30
• side income for more pension points or private savings

If someone asks, “How can I retire early? Any tricks?” the answer is: through long-term, consistent saving and investing - not shortcuts.

Optimize private retirement planning: The second pillar of your pension

If you rely only on the state pension, you will almost always face a gap.
That’s why additional instruments are important:

• company pension schemes
• private pension insurance (compare carefully!)
• Riester/Rürup (depending on income profile)
• tax-advantaged savings options
• real estate as part of the retirement strategy (no guarantee, but can be useful)

These components help improve your pension and reduce long-term dependence on state benefits. Private retirement planning helps narrow the pension gap in a targeted way.

Conclusion: Early retirement is possible - but only with a clear strategy

The key insights:

• Without calculating your pension gap, you don’t know where you stand.
• More pension points and stable investments are crucial.
• Early retirement requires disciplined saving and long-term planning.
• Tools such as pension calculators can help estimate your gap and support long-term planning.

The five strategies are not “magic tricks,” but clear steps that demonstrably work. Anyone who follows them early can realistically prepare for a higher pension or even early retirement.