Pensions Planning: The NUMBER

Pobby

Our income has decreased in the last few year by a lot. We are, on average, earning just over £2k a month but we seem to live pretty well on that. Quite a bit of entertainment and a few breaks. Also there is about £600 a month going into savings and pensions.

Run 2 cars. That will certainly come down to one. So I guess another decent saving there. Now when I take all this out of the number equation my figure £24,000 a year could be taken back to closer to £16k a year which is a couple of grand short of what our state pension will provide.

That`s nice as over the last number of years I have really developed the savings habit. So it will be nice to put, hopefully a good bit away each month. Oh and no more pension payments.

chris_m

MS_Dolphin wrote: »

For me, i don't feel the need to carry on working and I've got enough of an imagination to find things to do without sitting around watching TV.

Spot on - I've got around seven years to go before I can afford to retire and I've got plenty of plans for then, very little of which involve sitting around watching TV.

Tramping (and photographing) the Lakeland Fells is more appealing, especially if I'll be close enough that I can decide on the day if it's worth going, rather than "having" to go because I've motored 300 miles up and only have a fortnight before I have to go back to work. I'm hoping I'll be fit enough to do that and possibly do some voluntary work too, maybe with the Mountain Rescue bods.

I doubt I'll get bored :j

grastgirl

Is the "number" what you'd need at today's prices, or at the prices you anticipate when you retire?

Pobby

Sorry, I didn`t mean to suggest that all retired people do is sit around watching the TV. I have started a bit of volly work and plenty there of the people are in retirement.

Gatser

zygurat789 wrote: »

When did you last check your bills?

I wondered about utility bills under £1k too...

We have just switched (to Scott Power) and got them down to around £1200 (Gas & Electric only)

Gatser

grastgirl wrote: »

Is the "number" what you'd need at today's prices, or at the prices you anticipate when you retire?

To be precise...it's both!

I calculate what we would like/need to have a comfortable existance at todays prices.... but inflate it for what it will need to be in the future too.

Pobby

Gatser wrote: »

I wondered about utility bills under £1k too...

We have just switched (to Scott Power) and got them down to around £1200 (Gas & Electric only)

Water, on a meter and would suggest that saves us about £320 per year, gas and electricity are about £1,300 for us per year. I work from home a lot of the time so I don`t see that going up by very much. We have partial central heating which comes on a couple of times a day.

Movies package on Sky, broadband and phone comes in at about £840 per year. We will switch to payg mobiles so don`t know how much that will be, say £240 per year maximum. So it all comes in at less than £2,500 per year.

Did a quick tot up and for basic living, two of us, £10,000 a year should do it.

peterg1965

Pobby wrote: »

Movies package on Sky, broadband and phone comes in at about £840 per month.

One assumes you mean £840 per year? Else you are paying over £10K a year for Sky, broadband and phone

lvader

Depending on how long you have until retirement I expect utilities to go up in price well above regular infation, pay TV and phones etc will probably get cheaper, but not enough to balance the hike in utilities.

peterg1965

Some interesting numbers keep coming up, a very thought provoking thread!

marklv wrote: »

Once you get to retirement you only need a modest car anyway, so that is almost certainly too high.

On the contrary for me, I aim to be getting my Ferrari in retirement, as well as a small fleet of desirable cars.... that's what my strategy is aiming for!