'meager pension' is correct and usable in written English
You can use it when referring to a pension that is insufficient for basic needs, typically due to it being too small. For example: "The elderly woman lives on a meager pension, so she struggles to make ends meet."
His father refused to accept welfare after the paper mill forced him into early retirement on a meager pension.
Except that, morally, their beneficiaries are far less entitled to them than Grandma is to her meager pension, which even President Obama is willing to cut.
Umberto D. Ferrari, a retired bureaucrat who can't survive on his meager pension, battles with an unfeeling landlady to keep his rented room.
From that time on Bolzano was forbidden to teach, preach, or publish, and he had to sustain himself on a meager pension that was "graciously granted" to him by the emperor.
But you should know that somewhere right now there's an ex-NFL player you once rooted for, whose wife helps him put his socks on in the morning, cuts his meat in little pieces at lunchtime and worries at night how she'll stretch his meager pension to pay the doctor and heating bill; because that poor bastard can barely think at all anymore.
The grandfather (my old friend) did not want his promising kid to have to take part-time work (limiting his studies) so he -- despite his very meager pension and resources -- volunteered to the tune of £3,000 $4,5000) per year.
To help fire up the economy, cut unemployment and help those living on meager pensions, Vietnam's central bank has reduced interest rates several times in recent months.
Over the past decade and a half, Ivanishvili has been dispensing gifts not only to cultural elites like Tavadze, but to the needy, too, paying for health care for poor children and subsidizing the meager pensions of the elderly and disabled.
After years of contraction that have thrown millions of Russian officers and soldiers into a depressed economy on meager pensions, Mr. Putin now faces the politically wrenching task of cutting hundreds of thousands more active-duty slots.
In his later years, Mikan was involved in a long-standing legal battle against the NBA, fighting to increase the meager pensions for players who had retired before the league became lucrative.
In more than a dozen conversations a visitor had with older residents at Ms. Merkel's campaign stop, at Old Market Square, talk turned quickly to their too-meager pensions, and among younger spectators to their abiding indifference toward the chancellor.
