How much do you really need to live on in retirement?

joansgirl

Holidays seems to quite a big thing in retirement planning. If you want the holidays then yes, you need to budget for them. If I wanted to have holidays I'd have had to carry on working until SRA I expect but luckily they don't interest me at all.

It all depends exactly what you want from retirement. Some people look forward to the nice holidays they can have, things they can have and do that they couldn't when working.

And some are like me, just happy to be out of the rat race

lessonlearned

I heard a good one the other day.

"When you are retired, every day is a holiday". I agree. I make that my mantra. :rotfl:

I have taken a few big trips and I will probably take a few more but I regard them as the icing on the cake. I do enjoy travelling but having said that I wouldn't fret if I couldn't go away again.

Mnd

Our current income is just a shade over 2k a month(nett)
I'm retired 64 and my wife still works, she's 58 and will probably work for 4 more years

I reckon we would be fine on 15k a year, our planning gives us our 2k until 1 of us passes away, so I think we will be more than comfortable

Bill_M_1238

I've spent a fair bit of time over the past few months planning various scenarios, have read lots of blogs and guidance both here and on other sites, and finally think I have my plan in place.

Have used current expenses to estimate likely retirement expenses. Some are easy enough, council tax, home insurance, utilities etc as will remain constant between now and retirement. Will rise each year of course so have factored in annual increases across them all.

Not so easy is things like food and household expenses, entertainment, hobbies etc, simply because whilst still have kids at home they are so variable and to be honest we don't have time for hobbies or entertainment that isn't family friendly.. so for this category I have estimated and over egged the figures so will most likely have a bit of slack here.

Anyway, based on current figures a 'no frills' retirement comes in at £24k per annum. Comfortable with some travel is £30k and Luxury with longhall holidays, 2 or 3 shorthall each year and 2 cars works out as £37k each year.

Sounds like a lot to me but when I read 'which' it's actually very similar to their figures.

So with target income set, just need to ensure we save enough over coming years to ensure we can achieve this and for every 30 - 40k we save over and above, before then, is another year we can potentially go earlier...

Sea_Shell

Having monitored our spending now for 2 years, we currently only spend approx. £12500, so we're budgeting for £15k in retirement. We only need to make 3% net of inflation on all investments/cash to cover that without touching the capital.

Murphybear

lessonlearned wrote: »

I heard a good one the other day.

"When you are retired, every day is a holiday". I agree. I make that my mantra. :rotfl:

I have taken a few big trips and I will probably take a few more but I regard them as the icing on the cake. I do enjoy travelling but having said that I wouldn't fret if I couldn't go away again.

We celebrated our 20th anniversary in 2016. We had planned to go to the Lake District for a week but added on another week in Northumberland. Drove 2000 miles and spent a fortune which I really regret now. We moved to Dorset (from Devon) recently and thankfully there are so many new things to explore we don't need to up our mileage.

sukysue

We don't seem to be spending as much as we thought we would m currently managing on our work pensions approx 2400 per month and not needing to go into our savings. I am not complaining lol just that we don't need as much or so it seems. I am not interested in Hols or fast cars or face lifts lol etc etc just a nice quiet happy retirement suits us very well. The beauty of being retired is that we have the time to appreciate the little things in life, a lovely cup of tea and a buttered tea cake while watching Escape to the Country lol , watching the birds eat their fill off the lawn , being able to go to the library and read a book after so long of not being able to do this. I feel so free at last.

Mnd

Rough estimates

£100 a week on food. Way over the top! 5200.
£100 a week on bills possibly tight. 5200
5k a year holiday budget. 5000
Car tax/service/insurances etc. 5000
Still leaves 4k for discretionary spend

I think we will be OK on our 2k a month we are planning

sukysue

We still have DD1 in Uni so we are paying around 6 k for her accommodation and travel but only for another year , we haven't had to go into the savings for this so l suppose we are managing on 2k a month. It will be great when she has finished Uni , only another year to go then she will be a midwife and paying her own way , yay!!