It's time to start digging up those Squirrelled Nuts!!!!

Sea_Shell

westv said:

NedS said:

So who exactly do we think the government would get to perform this mid-life MOT? Staff at the jobcentre (pointless), a regulated financial advisor (expensive), or who?

I also disagree with the "economically inactive" tag - those retired are far from economically inactive - they may no longer be earning an income but they are spending money in the economy, keeping businesses afloat, keeping people in jobs, paying wages, paying taxes (income tax, VAT etc). If you took everyone labelled economically inactive out of the economy it would look substantially different.

It's a statistcal term, nothing more.

I am not a number!!!!

😉

barnstar2077

Sea_Shell said:

westv said:

NedS said:

So who exactly do we think the government would get to perform this mid-life MOT? Staff at the jobcentre (pointless), a regulated financial advisor (expensive), or who?

I also disagree with the "economically inactive" tag - those retired are far from economically inactive - they may no longer be earning an income but they are spending money in the economy, keeping businesses afloat, keeping people in jobs, paying wages, paying taxes (income tax, VAT etc). If you took everyone labelled economically inactive out of the economy it would look substantially different.

It's a statistcal term, nothing more.

I am not a number!!!!

😉

You are a free squirrel!

Time4T_Accounts

westv said:

NedS said:

So who exactly do we think the government would get to perform this mid-life MOT? Staff at the jobcentre (pointless), a regulated financial advisor (expensive), or who?

I also disagree with the "economically inactive" tag - those retired are far from economically inactive - they may no longer be earning an income but they are spending money in the economy, keeping businesses afloat, keeping people in jobs, paying wages, paying taxes (income tax, VAT etc). If you took everyone labelled economically inactive out of the economy it would look substantially different.

It's a statistcal term, nothing more.

As I understand it, the data are collected in the Labour Force Survey, which was an EU requirement : it could be interesting to see how this develops, post-brexit. 

Sea_Shell

Oh no!!!   Not the B word 😲

😉

atush

Sea_Shell said:

Just checking in.

Not much to report, all been quite quiet here.    Nothing to see!!

Christmas isn't a big thing for us, as we buy very few pressies and don't go OTT on the food and drink, and so December is usually quite a low spend month. 

We get organised early for what we do need to buy and so by now, it's mostly all done.

ious of. 

We do a big christmas as we have 3 boys grown now.  They complained this year as my portions are smaller lol, but i do supply the drink too. But i do buy early during sales esp on drinks but presents too.

So we arent too elaborate. but with 5 adults in the house, our weekly shop has more than doubled, esp with the extra drink.

Daffodil1234

Wishing everyone a good 2023 !

Closed off the 2022 accounts - while we are not yet retired, we're trying to live "as if" so that we can check what budget we need to plan for - with the hope to move into retirement within a couple of years.

Totals came out as below at £29k spend for 2 adults.  Looking at this, I can see we could have been more restricted on spending on some items.  We're budgeting £30k for 2023 and will probably aim to reduce spend on some of the categories below.

Categories	Actual Spend per year 2022
Bills (household inc gas, elec, water, council tax, insurance etc)	£6,515
"Supermarket", inc all food and drink plus any other items typically bought for the household from a supermarket (e.g. loo roll, household cleaners, cat food)	£5,741
Discretionary & Leisure (e.g. hobbies, days out, visiting relatives, occaisional meals out)	£5,722
Personal care (inc clothes, shoes, haircuts etc)	£2,148
Holidays	£1,761
Transport and travel (car inc insurance, MOT, petrol, parking, bus, train)	£1,743
Tech and Comms - broadband, phone bill per month, TV licence, anti virus software, tech upgrades, etc	£1,617
Health care (inc prescriptions, dentistry, optician, some specialist health items)	£1,304
Cat (inc vet etc)	£746
Exercise (gym membership)	£510
Presents / Gifts	£469
Charitable donations	£432
Cash	£260
Totals	£28,967

Albermarle

Daffodil1234 said:

Wishing everyone a good 2023 !

Closed off the 2022 accounts - while we are not yet retired, we're trying to live "as if" so that we can check what budget we need to plan for - with the hope to move into retirement within a couple of years.

Totals came out as below at £29k spend for 2 adults.  Looking at this, I can see we could have been more restricted on spending on some items.  We're budgeting £30k for 2023 and will probably aim to reduce spend on some of the categories below.

Categories	Actual Spend per year 2022
Bills (household inc gas, elec, water, council tax, insurance etc)	£6,515
"Supermarket", inc all food and drink plus any other items typically bought for the household from a supermarket (e.g. loo roll, household cleaners, cat food)	£5,741
Discretionary & Leisure (e.g. hobbies, days out, visiting relatives, occaisional meals out)	£5,722
Personal care (inc clothes, shoes, haircuts etc)	£2,148
Holidays	£1,761
Transport and travel (car inc insurance, MOT, petrol, parking, bus, train)	£1,743
Tech and Comms - broadband, phone bill per month, TV licence, anti virus software, tech upgrades, etc	£1,617
Health care (inc prescriptions, dentistry, optician, some specialist health items)	£1,304
Cat (inc vet etc)	£746
Exercise (gym membership)	£510
Presents / Gifts	£469
Charitable donations	£432
Cash	£260
Totals	£28,967

Two things stand out .

Discretionary and Leisure at nearly £6K ( not including holidays)
Tech and Comms at £1,600. I think most will be spending max £600 a year for broadband and phone bill, if that.

Maybe some items to look at in 2023 !

Daffodil1234

Thanks Albemarle,

Tech and comms - that also includes software updates / annual fees for software licenses, and we have a particular TV and broadband package which is more pricey at £900 per year but does include some channels which one of us especially likes watching (connected to a hobby).

Discretionary / Leisure - this is the one which most surprised me.  This category includes 3 specific hobbies that we do between us, plus days out, tickets to events etc, and quite a large chunk (£1200) on trips to various elderly relatives who are in different parts of the country (trips including petrol cost and sometimes overnight stays).  I think this category overall is the one for us to focus on most in 2023.

The balancing act that we are trying to get right is to combine living to enjoy the "now" - hobbies, events, days out -  and also combine saving for the future.

Sea_Shell

As promised here’s our year end round up.

Firstly here are the totals for the year ends of both “pot” and annual spends for the last 4 years.

2019 - £562,337 & £11,087

2020 - £597,659 & £11,337

2021 - £653,155 & £17,571 (Includes £3000 boiler)

2022 - £571,350 & £18,470 (Includes £4500 cloakroom and fencing)

 

We didn’t quite get to the “spend £22k in 2022”, but then we weren’t exactly trying!!

 

So we still have more (just) than we started with, even after having spent over £47k (20-22)

Our average spends, since retirement, remains under £15k, which was our “very loose” budget, when we started out.

 

Our current pot is made up as follows:

£12,400 – Easy Access Cash (net of CC balances)

£10,030 – Loanpad P2P (60 day notice)

£22,808 – Various 1 yr fixes, due to start maturing from April 23 onwards at regular intervals.

£32,840 – Aviva Drawdown pension pot (being drawn at £1150 pm)

£197,500 – S&S ISAs

£295,640 – Untouched DC pension pots

 

Our 2022 annual spends are summarised below:

Bills	4306.18
Holidays/Ente	2343.29
Car Expenses	770.09
Groceries	2651.78
Household	5534.31
Health/Beauty	849.36
Clothes/Shoes	160.45
Fuel	532.01
Gifts/Cards	510.52
Bank/ISA Fees*	704.75
Phones/Calls	107.56
	18470.3

Going forwards (taking out any capital spends – of which we have none planned) we have a “loose” budget for 2023 of £16,500, which takes into account likely increases in bills and general 10% inflation on all other spends.

This remains within our 3% window.  Even if we stretched that to 4%, it would be almost £23k

 

* We’re going to have a long hard look at the fees we pay to Fidelity, as they’re a bit steep.  I’m discussing this on another thread (not mine)

 

So Happy New Year to you all, and here’s to surviving it financially intact!

 

SouthCoastBoy

Thanks for info, I'm interested in fees as currently with h&l but they too are expensive so looking to move, currently interactive investor is where I'm planing yo go. Do you have the link to the other thread? Thks