Would you retire on these numbers?

System

Food - £1000 per year
Council Tax - £1000
Car - £2000 per year
Gas & Elec - £1000 per year

Leaves £7k for clothes, repairs, luxuries

Piece of cake!

rodent

berbastrike wrote: »

Food - £1000 per year
Council Tax - £1000
Car - £2000 per year
Gas & Elec - £1000 per year

Leaves £7k for clothes, repairs, luxuries

Piece of cake!

Obviously you are working on politicians understanding of costings !!
Here is mine:
Food £5000
Ctax £1800
Car Ins £400 Fuel £1500 Tax £200 Depreciation £1000 Mot/Works/tyres etc £200 (Tot £)3300
Gas £1200
Elec £700
House ins £300
House mainteance/repairs £1000
Tot £13300

I wont be able to have cake !!:rotfl:

PenguinJim

I considered the UK for retirement, but it's not exactly pressing my buttons. Council tax alone makes it rather unpalatable.

We're currently looking at retiring in America. We'll get a hobby farm in the next few years in Canada and use it as a summer home for the foreseeable future (it has the potential to be rented out for further income, either short-term or long-term, but we're not factoring any income from it into our plans).

When we retire, we'll sell our house and get a nice place in South America (Ecuador is looking reasonable at the moment, but we're at least 20 years away from retirement (30 if we wait until we're in our 60s!), so that's far from settled). Then we can spend our summers in Canada and winters in South America, and there are plenty of holiday opportunities in the USA, Mexico, Galapagos, etc.

Or maybe I'm just daydreaming. :A

Perelandra

No, I wouldn't- not at 52... unless i've missed the complicated parts of your answers (I'm a simple soul!). But possibly 54.

From 52, there's a very high risk of something "going wrong" (market crash/legislation changes/war/martians landing) at some point during retirement. The longer your retirement period, the higher the likelihood that this will happen at some point.

I'd therefore want a few years expenditure as a cash buffer if I were going to retire as early as 52.

But then, I'm sure you know this!

On a different note-

When you say "retire", do you mean "stop current job, but continue being productive", or do you mean "stop current job, and become a man of leisure"? At 52, I don't think I'd be able to do the latter if I were on minimum income. At 65, I might feel more comfortable that I'd done my bit by then... arbitrary as that age might be!

greenglide

From 52, there's a very high risk of something "going wrong" (market crash/legislation changes/war/martians landing) at some point during retirement.

So what is it you know (which we don't) which will happen at 53 which means that 54 is OK but 52 isn't?

getmore4less

All this is made a lot easier when you consider that creating income is relatively easy.

If a £45k+ job has been giving you the lifestyle and savings to become sort of self funding in your early 50s at a base level of £15k ish, it will be suprisingly easy to generate another £15-£20k on a part time basis if the skill sets are right.

Part time could be 1-2 days a week or say 15-20 weeks a year. that can make the initial pot last longer or top up discretionary spending.

System

You are seriously contemplating nearly 50 years of retirement on an income of £12,000 ? You must be extremely abstemious in your taste for food and drink, and have very modest and inexpensive interests and pastimes.
What will you do if after 20 years of very little you develop an interest that requires a bit more expenditure?

jamesd

Perelandra wrote: »

When you say "retire", do you mean "stop current job, but continue being productive", or do you mean "stop current job, and become a man of leisure"?

Part of what prompted me to have my original goals was spending all of my savings while doing full time unpaid voluntary work. That work got me my current job. One of my objectives is to have the freedom to do that sort of thing again.

greenglide wrote: »

So what is it you know (which we don't) which will happen at 53 which means that 54 is OK but 52 isn't?

There aren't any certainties with investing but there are patterns. the uncertainties are part of why I gave a range of values for different death ages and investment returns. Longer delay means more safety margin or a property upgrade or higher available income or some combination.

jamesd

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

You are seriously contemplating nearly 50 years of retirement on an income of £12,000 ? You must be extremely abstemious in your taste for food and drink, and have very modest and inexpensive interests and pastimes.

Perhaps worth considering that for the past nine or so years I've been saving and investing in excess of 60% of net pay plus gross pension contributions after most of a life used to low incomes. I don't have extravagant tastes in most areas, nor expensive interests and passtimes.

My costs for overhead are about £450 a month/ £5,400 a year (water, gas, electricity, council tax, internet/TV, TV licence, landline and mobile phones, property insurance). Add £405 for 9% mortgage interest / £5860 a year and £12,000 a year total leaves £1740 a year for food and general household goods and assorted healthcare expenses like dentistry. Not a lot of room in there for capital expenditures but it's also unlikely that the mortgage interest rate would be 9% without me offsetting it.

So that £12,000 isn't my desired target; rather it's the comfortable enough living level that I know I can handle without substantial difficulty.

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

What will you do if after 20 years of very little you develop an interest that requires a bit more expenditure?

One thing that I did not do was eliminate the mortgage interest cost allowance after deducting the capital to clear the mortgage a little before its end date. That's £405 a month/ £5860 a year available for other uses. Ignoring offset the current cost would be about £135 a month/£1620 a year.

However, £12,000 is not the central projected income. Rather, it's the exceptional market performance case where investment returns drop to just 1% for the whole of retirement. A central case with realistic for me life expectancy would be in the £17000 range at the moment.

In general my view has been that I'd be happy and very comfortable, with higher spending than I actually do today, if I had median pensioner income of around £18,000 a year, with a 50-100% safety margin to cover negative investment performance risk. What that would mean for me as an objective is something like a Firecalc 95-98% confidence level of having that income level. To get that result takes the more normal market return income levels to over £30,000 a year, provided I'm willing to use the flexibility of spending to drop as required towards the minimum level.

However, I'm interested in a broad range of views. In general I'm in agreement with the view that £12,000 is too low as a desired target before deliberately deciding to retire, for a person with my spending levels.

System

rodent wrote: »

Obviously you are working on politicians understanding of costings !!
Here is mine:
Food £5000
Ctax £1800
Car Ins £400 Fuel £1500 Tax £200 Depreciation £1000 Mot/Works/tyres etc £200 (Tot £)3300
Gas £1200
Elec £700
House ins £300
House mainteance/repairs £1000
Tot £13300

I wont be able to have cake !!:rotfl:

Food, £15 A DAY? What kind of beast are you?

Ctax, £1800 fair enough.

Depreciation, £1000 only if you have a expensive car. My ins is £190 and I'm 23. Tax is free if you buy the right car.

Gas £1200, way too high. Elec the same.

House ins could get down to £100.

House maintenance, repairs, £200 max.