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

Sea_Shell

GazzaBloom said:

Sea_Shell said:

Hands up who else's credit card bill covering December is only £255 !!! 

What's a credit card? Don't have one.

Ha ha very funny.     I'm not rising to that one!!! 

bluenose1

Sea_Shell said:

GazzaBloom said:

Sea_Shell said:

Hands up who else's credit card bill covering December is only £255 !!! 

What's a credit card? Don't have one.

Ha ha very funny.     I'm not rising to that one!!! 

I actually don’t use mine any more as getting 1% cashback on my Chase debit card. Though I know  I spend too much on clothing and shoes. For example I have over 12 pairs of shoes/ boots in the porch, including 3 different types of walking shoes and 4 different trainees, though two are leather, dressier ones for shopping etc. And that does not include the sandals under the bed.
We also spend a lot on holidays, have booked 4 already for 2023 costing approx £11k including spends, spent similar last year. Though at least £6k of that is Florida with our 19 year old so those holidays will stop soon.
Coukd easily cut the holiday  expenditure but don’t want to as loved all my holidays last year. Maybe in next couple of years they will reduce.

Nebulous2

Sea_Shell said:

Hands up who else's credit card bill covering December is only £255 !!! 

£292 - includes almost £100 for annual travel insurance and the same as a deposit for a holiday in Spain. 

zagfles

Sea_Shell said:

Hands up who else's credit card bill covering December is only £255 !!! 

Err...not quite...£1540, but it is our lowest credit card bill so far in the tax year

But the vast majority of our spends go on the credit cards - basically almost everything other than household bills, cash withdrawals (not much needed these days) and occasional house maintenance jobs (guttering etc).

Last tax year our total spend was £31.5k of which £25k was credit card

Audaxer

Kim1965 said:

GazzaBloom said:

NedS said:

zagfles said:

Albermarle said:

Kim1965 said:

Sea_Shell said:

There's plenty of room for belt tightening if we really HAD to!! 😉

How?
 Your annual spend for a couple is 15 k approx. That already puts you below the last "which" findings for a basic life style.
 What sort of things could you cut back on? 

I had the same thought. In my mind a couple living off two state pensions ( £20K) would be a rock bottom minimum, unless you had no choice but to live on less.

The pandemic year was a good test - when spending was restricted in loads of ways for obvious reasons. We spent £21k in the 2020/21 tax year (ex mortgage), and that was for a couple with 2 (partailly) dependant kids, they were at uni but lived with us about half the year. And there was loads we could have cut back on had we had to, eg we had loads of takeaways, we went on a foreign holiday and a couple of UK ones, we got a new greenhouse, furniture etc.

Agreed - 2020/21 tax year was an ideal opportunity for us to benchmark our essential expenditure and get a good feel for the minimum we would need for retirement. For us, expenditure was £17,800 including a teenager who barely left the house.

I'm some years away from retirement but track expected retirement expenditure in today's money. Our basic expenses with one car, all bills, weekly food, energy, small allowances for family birthdays comes in at around £16.5K pa. That's our base needs covered with no spare for leisure/hobbies but does include a full Sky TV package

But would you be content with that life style for 20 years or so?
 Bills, food, car for us is15k, our baseline. Over xmas we entertained some friends, the one off shop for that evening was£80 (had to go to sainsburys), it struck mě that there may be no room for things like this in a frugal retirement. Ok, we wouldnt entertained like that every week. 

We couldn't live on £16.5k a year. In addition to bills, food and car, we often have costs for house maintenance, health, holidays, meals out, dog, hobbies, gifts and Xmas. Even with that I also have an 'Other' column in the spreadsheet that includes anything else like books, clothes, charity donations etc.

That all amounted to around £24.5k last year in regular spend which I considered reasonable. We have been fairly mindful of our spend last year by mainly shopping at Aldi, and we hardly ever buy alcohol. I don't think we could get our spend much lower than that without affecting our quality of life.

Stargunner

Sea_Shell said:

Well to answer our "cutbacks" question.  Here's again our spends from 2022, and where we COULD cut back, if we really HAD to (which I don't believe we would have to).     Yes, it wouldn't be nice, and it wouldn't be sustainable, but like others have said, it wouldn't be for ever as we have SP and DB benefits that start coming on line in 8/9 years time.   Once all in payment, they'll provide about £26,000 in todays money.



Bills £4306.18   Not a lot we can do about these, and we estimate that these will rise to £5,000 in 2023, so plus ~£700

Holidays/Entertainment  £2343.29     As a category this could be slashed to almost nil.

Car Expenses £770.09    We only have the one, so not much to cut back here.

Groceries £2651.78    Includes alcohol and "fancy" foods, so we could cut about £10 a week off - so ~£500 pa

Household £5534.31    Included large capital expenditure, so should usually be around £1000

Health/Beauty £849.36     Includes weekly swimming and fancy toiletries, so could cut about ~£300 here

Clothes/Shoes £160.45     Hardly needs cutting back!!

Fuel £532.01     Would drop dramatically if no holidays (subject to pump prices), so say £200 saving

Gifts/Cards £510.52     Could be cut to nil.  

Bank/ISA Fees £704.75     We are looking at cutting this to almost nothing by switching.

Phones/Calls £107.56     Included a newer phone, so will leave as is.

2022 was therefore £18470.3


Making all the above changes could slash that to ....

£10,170

I don’t think you ever need to worry about cutting back on anything. In fact, you could easily spend more without any worry. If you spent £25k a year until your pensions kick in, you will still have over £200k left when they do, which you don’t need , as your pensions are more than enough to finance your lifestyle. 

NedS

Audaxer said:

Kim1965 said:

GazzaBloom said:

NedS said:

zagfles said:

Albermarle said:

Kim1965 said:

Sea_Shell said:

There's plenty of room for belt tightening if we really HAD to!! 😉

How?
 Your annual spend for a couple is 15 k approx. That already puts you below the last "which" findings for a basic life style.
 What sort of things could you cut back on? 

I had the same thought. In my mind a couple living off two state pensions ( £20K) would be a rock bottom minimum, unless you had no choice but to live on less.

The pandemic year was a good test - when spending was restricted in loads of ways for obvious reasons. We spent £21k in the 2020/21 tax year (ex mortgage), and that was for a couple with 2 (partailly) dependant kids, they were at uni but lived with us about half the year. And there was loads we could have cut back on had we had to, eg we had loads of takeaways, we went on a foreign holiday and a couple of UK ones, we got a new greenhouse, furniture etc.

Agreed - 2020/21 tax year was an ideal opportunity for us to benchmark our essential expenditure and get a good feel for the minimum we would need for retirement. For us, expenditure was £17,800 including a teenager who barely left the house.

I'm some years away from retirement but track expected retirement expenditure in today's money. Our basic expenses with one car, all bills, weekly food, energy, small allowances for family birthdays comes in at around £16.5K pa. That's our base needs covered with no spare for leisure/hobbies but does include a full Sky TV package

But would you be content with that life style for 20 years or so?
 Bills, food, car for us is15k, our baseline. Over xmas we entertained some friends, the one off shop for that evening was£80 (had to go to sainsburys), it struck mě that there may be no room for things like this in a frugal retirement. Ok, we wouldnt entertained like that every week. 

We couldn't live on £16.5k a year. In addition to bills, food and car, we often have costs for house maintenance, health, holidays, meals out, dog, hobbies, gifts and Xmas. Even with that I also have an 'Other' column in the spreadsheet that includes anything else like books, clothes, charity donations etc.

That all amounted to around £24.5k last year in regular spend which I considered reasonable. We have been fairly mindful of our spend last year by mainly shopping at Aldi, and we hardly ever buy alcohol. I don't think we could get our spend much lower than that without affecting our quality of life.

That's exactly where we are. We have identified our core essential keep our heads above water spending is around £20k/year now. For life to not be a constant struggle, lets say £25k (or 2 x personal tax allowances) is comfortable. Then lets add on another £10k per year for holidays, a new (second hand) car, new boiler or house maintenance bills etc (not all in one year) and we get to our target income of £35-40k per year that our models say our pensions can provide.

But I think it's important to understand what your core spend is, and what you could cut right back to in an emergency if you absolutely needed to. Covid 2020/21 gave many of us a chance to accurately determine that figure as we lived that life for 12 months.

Sea_Shell

This thread does make me chuckle at times.   Various comments vary between...

I've either not got enough...if xyz happens.

Or I've got plenty and can easily loosen the purse strings.

Sea_Shell

zagfles said:

Sea_Shell said:

Hands up who else's credit card bill covering December is only £255 !!! 

Err...not quite...£1540, but it is our lowest credit card bill so far in the tax year

But the vast majority of our spends go on the credit cards - basically almost everything other than household bills, cash withdrawals (not much needed these days) and occasional house maintenance jobs (guttering etc).

Last tax year our total spend was £31.5k of which £25k was credit card

Same here.... except for the amounts!!! 😉😎

Bravepants

Sea_Shell said:

This thread does make me chuckle at times.   Various comments vary between...

I've either not got enough...if xyz happens.

Or I've got plenty and can easily loosen the purse strings.

You didn't expect T'interweb to be helpful did you? 

I find others' perspectives on one's situation useful in prompting thinking, rather than being a prompt to blindly follow someone's advice/ideas. At the end of the day only you can decide.