Pensions Planning: The NUMBER

TywysogLloegr

The 2024 PLSA Retirement Living Standards is out, it says what anyone doing their budget knows. Everything is now more expensive. Interesting the moderate level has increased so much.

Kim1965

TywysogLloegr said:

The 2024 PLSA Retirement Living Standards is out, it says what anyone doing their budget knows. Everything is now more expensive. Interesting the moderate level has increased so much.

Think its saying a moderate retirement has gone up by 7k a year circa an extra200 k pot! 

NoMore

Still seems to me (and the whole point of this thread) you should work out your own Number to give you the lifestyle you want, rather than work to this report, and either end up saving too much or not saving enough when you suddenly realise your number does not match to the PLSA.

m_c_s

Best to work out your number based on your own lifestyle.

Based on PLSA data for a comfortable lifestyle a couple spends:
£264 per week on food
£27 per week on alcohol
£71 per week on household goods
£48 per week on clothes
£338 per week on social and cultural participation (holidays)
£382 other costs (council tax, house services, motoring etc)
Total of £1130 per week (£59000 pa outside London)
No rent or mortgage. 

SouthCoastBoy

Kim1965 said:

TywysogLloegr said:

The 2024 PLSA Retirement Living Standards is out, it says what anyone doing their budget knows. Everything is now more expensive. Interesting the moderate level has increased so much.

Think its saying a moderate retirement has gone up by 7k a year circa an extra200 k pot! 

Which I'm not sure I agree, so if you retired last year with what you thought was a pot to sustain a moderate living standard, it could possibly be that is no longer the case. Therefore one can never retire because the parameters could quickly change.

Phossy

For me the research base isn't really big enough or representative enough. They have extrapolated a lot from a very small sample size - "135 participants took part in 14 discussion groups between January and May 2023 "

In previous iterations, they stated that their modelling showed 75% of employees would achieve at least the minimum standard, around half would be between minimum and moderate and that 1 in 6 would be between moderate and comfortable. 

LHW99

m_c_s said:

Best to work out your number based on your own lifestyle.

Based on PLSA data for a comfortable lifestyle a couple spends:
£264 per week on food
£27 per week on alcohol
£71 per week on household goods
£48 per week on clothes
£338 per week on social and cultural participation (holidays)
£382 other costs (council tax, house services, motoring etc)
Total of £1130 per week (£59000 pa outside London)
No rent or mortgage. 

Wow! I haven't yet read the article, but we spend around

£80 per week on food

Almost nothing on alcohol (perhaps £10 per month)

total "other costs" are ~ £200

But that's pretty much it. We aim to put away maybe £150 per week towards capital items, sometimes more.

So less than £500 per week!

[Deleted User]

Personally, I find some of the figures, quoted in the moderate and comfortable categories of the report way over what most people need or indeed could ever have. 

Everything depends on personal priorities and lifestyles. There are many people in some sections of these forums living worthwhile and in their own minds comfortable retirements on incomes less than £20000. However,  most do not have to pay rent or a mortgage but not everybody.

Pat38493

SouthCoastBoy said:

Kim1965 said:

TywysogLloegr said:

The 2024 PLSA Retirement Living Standards is out, it says what anyone doing their budget knows. Everything is now more expensive. Interesting the moderate level has increased so much.

Think its saying a moderate retirement has gone up by 7k a year circa an extra200 k pot! 

Which I'm not sure I agree, so if you retired last year with what you thought was a pot to sustain a moderate living standard, it could possibly be that is no longer the case. Therefore one can never retire because the parameters could quickly change.

That’s one way of looking at it.  However if for example you are following a SWR approach and you have tested your plan against historical data, there were several times in the last 120 years when there was one or other years of 10% inflation, so in theory you have already stress tested this situation and you should just up your spending by the rate of inflation.

Of course in reality most people will do something in between the two.

michaels

TywysogLloegr said:

The 2024 PLSA Retirement Living Standards is out, it says what anyone doing their budget knows. Everything is now more expensive. Interesting the moderate level has increased so much.

About 3k of price inflation and 6k of lifestyle inflation....did someone say vested interest?