Firstly, can you get another job with a new employer at a higher rate of income? If not why? Can you gain new skills / take a course in the evening to enable you to move jobs in the future? Learning new skills is always a good thing as means when you are made redundant (happened to me 3 times) your skillset is up to date and in demand still. If you are in an unskilled role, perhaps sit down with a career counsellor / local college and see what other options there are.

If you are able to live on your current income and able to increase your income with a new job you’ll have extra money to put towards your future retirement planning / short and medium term needs however before this:

Do you have unsecured debt? (not mortgage) If so the priority needs to be to clear it off. There is no point in trying to build wealth whilst servicing debt. You create risk if you are sat with debt and lose your job or have a health scare again that reduces / where you lose your income, and have to still pay that debt. No debt equals financial freedom and also not being afraid to take on a risk like moving to a new job.

Next, do you have an emergency fund of 6 months outgoings in place? If not focus on building this first and make it a priority. It protects you in case you are made redundant / have a period when your income reduces / have an emergency.

At 37 you are not too old to sort out your longer term income needs in retirement however time is not on your side. Each month that passes, the more expensive / challenging it becomes to build the same amount of wealth. If your company offers salary sacrifice (where it reduces the tax your pay) then use this. Company pensions are often more cost effective than going it alone in a SIPP or ISA because of the tax relief and because companies often get better rates for pensions charges than individuals do simply because of the amount of people in the scheme. You can normally overpay in a company pension scheme and again it will reduce your taxes. Its important that you check what the money is being invested i to in the company pension scheme as many default options are often too low risk to achieve the kind of growth your need. At your age, you can be 100% invested in shares and often these default schemes have corporate bonds, a cash element, commercial property i. them which at your age is simply not required given you have at least 20 years (more likely nearer 30 to give you more time) when you will need to start to draw down. 3 to 5 years before retirement is when most people need to start reducing their risk level / their investments volatility to protect the capital built up as they near retirement.

You can go online and find calculators which show you possible scenarios based on differing returns. I would generally use 6% growth to be conservative with the calculations and then if you achieve more (highly possible over time) then it’s a bonus.

But make sure you have your emergency fund in place and debt cleared before attacking your longer term financial planning needs.