Pensions Planning: The NUMBER

kimwp

Weekly numbers from the PLSA report for 2023 for a couple

	Minimum	Moderate	Comfortable
Couple	2023	2023	2023
Food	113.36	203.92	263.67
Alcohol	12.99	21.55	26.85
Clothing	19.03	47.95	47.95
Water rates	9.51	9.71	9.71
Council tax	27.58	36.84	36.84
Household insurances	1.99	4.15	4.15
Fuel	43.44	61.75	61.75
Other housing costs	2.01	22.99	24.9
Household goods	24.43	43.97	70.77
Household services	13.24	21.15	51.49
Personal goods and services	57.77	80.13	90.76
Motoring	0	78.02	90.89
Other travel costs	20.64	9.33	13.17
Social and cultural participation	82.7	184.84	337.77
Total (excluding rent)	428.69	826.29	1130.66

kimwp

LL_USS said:

@kimwp thanks. I have not seen this report but the numbers are very much what have been used across other sources. Minimum £14.365 for a single person, and the full state pension falls short of this number.

I think a lot of sources reference the PLSA reports.

I compared my 2023 spend to the numbers and I come in well under the minimum and not far off the state pension and I spent a silly amount on takeaways that year and had a cleaner. I do work full time though, so socialising spend might be higher and it doesn't include any pet costs. I deleted the numbers where the lower bracket already exceeded my spend to try to show which bracket my numbers fit into.

	Minimum	Moderate	Comfortable	Mine (2023) - weekly
Food	67.65			42.46
Alcohol	6.63			0.00
Takeaways & junk food	0			25.23
Clothing	9.52			8.31
Water rates	8.06			3.46
Council tax	20.68	27.63		27.00
Household insurances	1.73	4.12		3.19
Gas & Electricity	32.77			17.77
Other housing costs	2.01	22.99		7.69
Household goods	21.21			8.77
Household services	10.76	14.98		13.85
Personal goods and services	30.68			16.90
Motoring	0	79.76		31.90
Other travel costs				0.00
Social and cultural participation	51.62			18.46
Weekly Total	263.32			225.00
Annual Total	13692.64			11700

Edit 3rd Jan - just realised that my personal numbers don't take into account replacement of cars, white goods etc, which I think the PLSA numbers do.

LL_USS

@kimwp - jealous with your expenses :-). I literally don't buy anything other than absolute essentials for myself and still have a huge total sum for outgoings. Of course lots of these expenses are temporary and the total number will be very different when I downsize and no depedents.

trevjl

Those couple figures are in cuckoo land surely. I buy whatever I fancy food wise and including half a dozen bottles of beer spend nowhere near £113 a week on food including household and dog food and the like. Over £800 a week moderate, I spend less than that including shares in a couple of racehorses and I would class that as being in the  comfortable column. Minimum £1K pa on cloths - really ??

Nebulous2

@kimwp Thanks very much for revisiting this, and for laying out the tables for us. 

When we've looked at the PLSA figures before the people in this group have generally been quite critical of them. 

I'm hampered by not budgeting, nor keeping an accurate figure for expenditure. What I do keep is a monthly tally of our resources in capital and cash at hand. Retiring and working very part-time we expected to dig into those, whilst in reality, up until the last 6 months, we were actually ahead, in non-inflation adjusted terms, since retiring over 3 years ago. 

This has been an extraordinarily expensive year. Three foreign holidays, one of them an expensive 5 week antipodean trip, a new vehicle, a new bathroom and a big family celebration has seen our expenditure well above the comfortable level for a couple. 

Very roughly our food would be around the moderate level for a couple. £203
Council tax £29.60, which includes water. 
Gas and electric  £36
Motoring around £450 this year - diesel alone was over £500 in December.  
Holidays £384 - surprisingly that isn't much above the cultural participation for the comfortable couple. 

It's unlikely that expenses will be anything like that going forward. We've gone from two vehicles to one, and have booked two holidays next year already, but quite a bit of those have been paid. With our vehicle having a 3 year warranty, and only one vehicle to insure next year, those expenses are likely to come down. However as we are likely to do over 15000 miles a year, with 4-5000 of those towing a caravan, then motoring is always going to be one of our bigger expenses. 

MarriedWithKids89

DT2001 said:

MarriedWithKids89 said:

Hi all, here is our (couple, retired, late 50's, no dependents, no pets, non-smokers, mortgage free, MCOL area) year end spending summary (living fairly comfortably doing what we want when we want without being extravagant):

Subsistence: £16714 (groceries, fuel, utilities, insurances, taxes, etc.)
Luxuries: £14534 (holidays, short breaks, days out, meals, takeaways, etc.)
Non-discretionary CAPEX: £12435 (car/home repairs, white goods, furnishings, unexpected bills, etc., including £10000 wedding expenses)

If you have any questions then please feel free to ask. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year.

Is the whole of your expenditure covered by income or are you utilising capital (pre SPA) before your luxuries spend reduces (if the U curve research is to be used for planning)?

Hi DT2001, we receive a small income (about £4K) from a pension (taken early) but are mainly utilising capital prior to both drawing full SP at SPA. Note: we have not budgeted a reduction in luxuries expenditure as we get older as we expect to have to pay for extra things like some treatments, some gardening, some DIY, etc. 

Happy New Year Everyone.

MarriedWithKids89

kimwp said:

Weekly numbers from the PLSA report for 2023 for a couple

	Minimum	Moderate	Comfortable
Couple	2023	2023	2023
Food	113.36	203.92	263.67
Alcohol	12.99	21.55	26.85
Clothing	19.03	47.95	47.95
Water rates	9.51	9.71	9.71
Council tax	27.58	36.84	36.84
Household insurances	1.99	4.15	4.15
Fuel	43.44	61.75	61.75
Other housing costs	2.01	22.99	24.9
Household goods	24.43	43.97	70.77
Household services	13.24	21.15	51.49
Personal goods and services	57.77	80.13	90.76
Motoring	0	78.02	90.89
Other travel costs	20.64	9.33	13.17
Social and cultural participation	82.7	184.84	337.77
Total (excluding rent)	428.69	826.29	1130.66

That works out at £22291, £42967 and £58794 per annum respectively. This bears no resemblance to our spend last year (about £33000 excluding wedding expenses). For added reference we run one 5 year old car (which we plan to renew in the next 18 months), spent 2 weeks touring Ireland, a week in Cyprus, a week on the coast near Whitby, 5 days in the peak district, 4 days in a golf/spa in Dorset, 3 days in the Isle of Wight, a weekend in Canterbury plus half a dozen days out in Leamington Spa and London and numerous pub visits. For us, this is a comfortable lifestyle but, for others, it may not be and it is clearly nothing like the PLSA figures. But, to me, it does demonstrate that THE NUMBER is different for everyone and the importance of working it out beforehand (as best as possible). 

cfw1994

SouthCoastBoy said:

I have come to the conclusion I most probably won't use all my money, which I'm very happy about. It means I don't really need to budget for one off capital expenditure items. I know it is a fortunate position but I've worked and saved hard for a very long time.

So much so I'm paying for 6 of us to go to australia next Christmas I'm budgeting 25 to 30k 

£5K+ each?
How long is that for?

We are considering a trip Down Under sometime next winter.  hHaven’t properly looked into it, & we do have a fair number of friends and family to abuse the hospitality of, but I need to research a  lot more on the costs we might incur.   

No idea on the best (but reasonably priced 😉) ways of getting there.  We will have no time limitations, so a 1-2 month trip would be good to enjoy.

QrizB

MarriedWithKids89 said:

DT2001 said:

MarriedWithKids89 said:

Hi all, here is our (couple, retired, late 50's, no dependents, no pets, non-smokers, mortgage free, MCOL area) year end spending summary (living fairly comfortably doing what we want when we want without being extravagant):

Subsistence: £16714 (groceries, fuel, utilities, insurances, taxes, etc.)
Luxuries: £14534 (holidays, short breaks, days out, meals, takeaways, etc.)
Non-discretionary CAPEX: £12435 (car/home repairs, white goods, furnishings, unexpected bills, etc., including £10000 wedding expenses)

If you have any questions then please feel free to ask. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year.

Is the whole of your expenditure covered by income or are you utilising capital (pre SPA) before your luxuries spend reduces (if the U curve research is to be used for planning)?

Hi DT2001, we receive a small income (about £4K) from a pension (taken early) but are mainly utilising capital prior to both drawing full SP at SPA.

Are you using your full personal tax-free allowances? If not, do you have DC pensions you could draw from rather than capital?

Roger175

QrizB said:

MarriedWithKids89 said:

DT2001 said:

MarriedWithKids89 said:

Hi all, here is our (couple, retired, late 50's, no dependents, no pets, non-smokers, mortgage free, MCOL area) year end spending summary (living fairly comfortably doing what we want when we want without being extravagant):

Subsistence: £16714 (groceries, fuel, utilities, insurances, taxes, etc.)
Luxuries: £14534 (holidays, short breaks, days out, meals, takeaways, etc.)
Non-discretionary CAPEX: £12435 (car/home repairs, white goods, furnishings, unexpected bills, etc., including £10000 wedding expenses)

If you have any questions then please feel free to ask. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year.

Is the whole of your expenditure covered by income or are you utilising capital (pre SPA) before your luxuries spend reduces (if the U curve research is to be used for planning)?

Hi DT2001, we receive a small income (about £4K) from a pension (taken early) but are mainly utilising capital prior to both drawing full SP at SPA.

Are you using your full personal tax-free allowances? If not, do you have DC pensions you could draw from rather than capital?

Absolutely right! Due to having unexpectedly selling our BTL property last year, we have a large amount of cash savings sitting outside ISA/SIpps and having both now retired, there is limited opportunity to get this sheltered, nevertheless we are still both making sure we mop up any tax free allowance by withdrawing suitable sums from Sipps. Silly not to!