Pensions Planning: The NUMBER

tiptop1_2

Monthly expenses (Fixed): £750 (this covers council tax, utilities, regular food shops, mobile, insurance, car, fuel, subscriptions, memberships, etc, etc)

Other expenses are discretionary. Holidays, meals out, buying things like furniture/TV/etc. Monthly we allow £1000 for this. Most of it goes on holidays and meals out. Many months we have a surplus which we use to upgrade holidays.

We earn from a couple of part-time gigs totalling approx £6k per year.

Out = £1,750 x 12 = £21,000 per year
In = £6k per year
To cover this we draw approx £15k from pension pots per year. 
Additionally, we draw approx £5K - £10k per year for work on the house as and when we need.

The £20K -£30K we draw from the pension pot is easily made back from the investment. Therefore we sometimes splurge on huge holidays and a new car every year or two.

We do pay tax but have ignored from this basic info as it's not huge.

This is all without state pension as we're not old enough.

To get to this we both worked for 35 years without stopping and saved hard from the start. We then stopped full-time work because we could. To enjoy it while we can.   

Smudgeismydog

Sounds like you have it sussed @tiptop1_2, and are living the exact retirement you want. Well done

Again, it just shows how required income in retirement is so subjective, and why we should take the surveys with a punch of salt.