Going to work can be a chore at times, but those hard days should feel worth it when it comes to retirement and you can finally enjoy all those savings you’ve worked so hard for.

Saving for retirement can seem like a daunting task, but it’s important to start putting away as much money as possible to allow you to retire when you want.

The earlier you start saving, the better, as this will give you enough time to build a decent nest egg that will accumulate interest over time, helping you add some extra cash easily.

There’s also the option to pay voluntary contributions to top up any missing years on your National Insurance record, or you can choose to delay your pension to give you more time to put money into the pot.

But there’s another simple option to add some easy cash to your pension that you might not be aware of.

Research by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) has identified several life choices that can have a damaging effect on your pension fund, with one major mistake costing people £100,000.

The IFoA warns that people who don’t take advantage of additional employer contributions risk losing up to £100,000 of their pension savings.

Under the Pensions Act 2008, every employer in the UK must take certain staff into a workplace pension scheme and contribute to it through a process called ‘automatic enrolment’.

Any employer who has at least one member of staff has certain legal obligations and must pay at least three per cent of their employee’s ‘eligible earnings’ into their staff pension scheme. Under most schemes, this is the employee’s total earnings between £6,240 and £50,270 a year, before tax. Total winnings include:

Employers must then deduct the contributions from staff wages each month to put into the pension fund.

Most employers will allow staff to increase their contributions above the three per cent minimum and may offer the option to ‘match’ the extra money invested by staff up to a certain limit, meaning you can easily get a bigger boost to your savings .

Employees are advised to speak to their HR department or pension provider to see what additional contributions are available.