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How much do you spend in retirement ?
Comments
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Maybe it's all about impressing other people. You used to get people who would wander around the gym saying things like "I won't travel cattle class" in a very loud voice so everybody could hear. They obviously thought that they were impressing people even though the reality was the opposite.2
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hugheskevi said:My wife and I are on course for a retirement income of slightly under £50K p/a (after tax) from about the age of 45 (when we will take very early retirement).The first few years will be spent continually traveling, so I gave a lot of thought to things like camper vans or motorhomes. My conclusion was that they were extremely expensive, inflexible for intercontinental travel and so I would prefer to just have a car and a tent as well as using AirBnb and similar for travel around Europe.Although we could afford business class flights, I would never take them - not so much due to the financial implications as the environmental consequences. Flying is an environmental disaster to start with, and taking up so much unnecessary additional room makes it considerably worse. Doing things like taking additional positioning flights to reduce the personal cost comes at an excruciating cost to the planet. Therefore I only fly when necessary, try to keep to one return flight per year and prefer to travel overground wherever possible, even for very long distances (eg I've travelled overland to Thailand, Singapore and Cape Town on separate trips).Personally I always minimise costs and avoid unnecessary spend, partly from habit, partly for environmental reasons and primarily as it brings forward early retirement and extensive travel. Particularly at work, I find that even the people who I know earn less than half of what I do happily spend multiples of what I do on phones, cars and TV before even getting to entertainment and socialising. Typically saving, to the extent it exists at all for many of that group, appears to only involve saving for a mortgage deposit. However, I will happily spend money on things I consider good value (to us personally) which in our case involves computers, music lessons and some big ticket travel trips every couple of years or so.I expect to have far more than needed in retirement, but I like that security, particularly due to retiring so young. I think an income after tax of around £30K would be fine for a decent lifestyle, less would be possible but I'd be very hesitant to go much lower than £25K for us as a couple.4
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fred246 said:I have had similar discussions on this forum with people over private education and private healthcare. When my children were starting secondary school I asked people who paid a fortune for private education why they did that. Most couldn't answer which I found strange but a few whispered "no riff, raff". Paying private health insurance means you never have to use NHS facilities that everyone else uses. I wonder if this is the issue. Some people feel they belong in a different class. They pay a lot for it, they insist it is right, they don't like discussing the pros and cons. They insist that they have a right to do what they want with their money but it puts them in a different class.
We all have different levels of wealth. And we choose what we spend this on based on our own experience. I really think it is that simple. Doenst matter whether it is flights, restaurants, hotels, cars, health, education or whatever.0 -
fred246 said:Maybe it's all about impressing other people. You used to get people who would wander around the gym saying things like "I won't travel cattle class" in a very loud voice so everybody could hear. They obviously thought that they were impressing people even though the reality was the opposite.
You may well get obnoxious people in Business/First, but in all honesty you get them everywhere. I've travelled a fair amount on both of those classes and I've found that 99% of the people just want to keep themselves to themselves and tend to go to sleep as quickly as possible. It seems somewhat unfair to stereotype everyone with the same stigma on the basis of one person you've met in Business Class and a rather nebulous and slightly apocryphal account of someone at the gym. Maybe gyms attract that sort of person?
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fred246 said:Maybe it's all about impressing other people. You used to get people who would wander around the gym saying things like "I won't travel cattle class" in a very loud voice so everybody could hear. They obviously thought that they were impressing people even though the reality was the opposite.
Dont judge others and how they spend their cash or on what they have or have not.2 -
Personally I don't "get" expensive wine.
Lights blue touch paper and retreats!!!How's it going, AKA, Nutwatch? - 12 month spends to date = 2.60% of current retirement "pot" (as at end May 2025)1 -
Jaco70 said:Again, a very detailed summary of your retirement income. Whilst 50k after tax is a very impressive figure, massively so at such a young age, you are another person who feels that the actual cost of living will be lower (possibly much lower). I think this is the case with my parents (i.e. their cash at bank goes up rather than down) although my dad still keeps his hand in at our small business and so can’t really be considered to have 100% retired, and their foreign travel isn’t very much at all these days (by choice, rather than to save) but the idea of your wealth increasing after retirement seems a very reassuring thought. I’d be thrilled to achieve that. 👍
DD is about to start a 6 year uni degree and we just don't know how much we are going to need to help out. We do earn a fair bit but have been sal sac'ing what we can into pensions and buying the max allowed by our respective sharesave schemes so our takehome has been lower since we got the early retirement idea. We had a significant holiday last year when the opportunity presented, plus we decided to convert our van into a camper. Maybe next year we will get an inkling of how it might be going forward. Big holidays will always come from a seperate pot - if there's not enough in the pot we will cut our cloth accordingly.
We always thought that the early years might be more focussed on sorting the house out but lockdown has encouraged us to do that now.I’m a Senior Forum Ambassador and I support the Forum Team on the Pensions, Annuities & Retirement Planning, Loans
& Credit Cards boards. If you need any help on these boards, do let me know. Please note that Ambassadors are not moderators. Any posts you spot in breach of the Forum Rules should be reported via the report button, or by emailing forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com.
All views are my own and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.1 -
Bravepants said:fred246 said:You don't like talking to strangers yet you have made over 20,000 posts on this forum!
To be fair I think a lot of people think the same. I have flown a lot with my work since about 1996 when my career started, sometimes multiple times a year long haul, and I can honestly say in all that time I have had only one conversation with anyone, and I didn't instigate it. I don't mind a polite conversation with someone if they want to, but I don't usually start a conversation. I travelled business class a few times from Singapore and Australia on an Airbus A380, and the seats/beds are configued so that two people face each other diagonally opposite with a lift up screen between the seats. It's difficult sometimes to get over the stigma of being the first to raise the screen!However, what is worse is when you raise the screen and the flight attendant almost immediately lowers it to serve a drink or a hot towel. Also, on one occasion the screen was faulty and it wouldn't stay raised, collapsing with a loud bang a few seconds after raising. Very socially awkward! LOL
I think it's different if you're flying for work, but flying as a tourist I've had loads of interesting and useful conversations with people sat next to me, since the chance are obviously good that people on the plane with you are regular travellers, or they live in the country you're travelling to, and so can give lots of useful advice about what to see and do, where to eat etc.Same with cabin crew - they tend to have a lot of spare time on long haul flights and they're often willing to have a chat in the galley, and of course they're experience travellers too.Also, for me at least, one of the joys of travel is meeting people from different cultures/countries. I can talk to the family any time!
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hugheskevi said:My wife and I are on course for a retirement income of slightly under £50K p/a (after tax) from about the age of 45 (when we will take very early retirement).The first few years will be spent continually traveling, so I gave a lot of thought to things like camper vans or motorhomes. My conclusion was that they were extremely expensive, inflexible for intercontinental travel and so I would prefer to just have a car and a tent as well as using AirBnb and similar for travel around Europe.Although we could afford business class flights, I would never take them - not so much due to the financial implications as the environmental consequences. Flying is an environmental disaster to start with, and taking up so much unnecessary additional room makes it considerably worse. Doing things like taking additional positioning flights to reduce the personal cost comes at an excruciating cost to the planet. Therefore I only fly when necessary, try to keep to one return flight per year and prefer to travel overground wherever possible, even for very long distances (eg I've travelled overland to Thailand, Singapore and Cape Town on separate trips).Personally I always minimise costs and avoid unnecessary spend, partly from habit, partly for environmental reasons and primarily as it brings forward early retirement and extensive travel. Particularly at work, I find that even the people who I know earn less than half of what I do happily spend multiples of what I do on phones, cars and TV before even getting to entertainment and socialising. Typically saving, to the extent it exists at all for many of that group, appears to only involve saving for a mortgage deposit. However, I will happily spend money on things I consider good value (to us personally) which in our case involves computers, music lessons and some big ticket travel trips every couple of years or so.I expect to have far more than needed in retirement, but I like that security, particularly due to retiring so young. I think an income after tax of around £30K would be fine for a decent lifestyle, less would be possible but I'd be very hesitant to go much lower than £25K for us as a couple.
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MrSaver96 said:Roughly in order of significance...No children, a couple both in full time work, Defined Benefit pensions with Normal Pension age of 60, house price growth and a helpful period of strong investment gains after fortunately missing 2008 falls as my investment started after that.A certain level of income is necessary, but I could have earned a lot more if I wished. Back in about 2014 I decided not to seek any more career progression, as the extra responsibility and stress would not be worth the extra cash - I worked out back then that a promotion would reduce my time left in work from about 10 years to 9.5 years and it just wasn't worth it and settled with a salary of about £65K which I knew wouldn't go up much. My wife back then earned something like £55K and that increased faster than me, so we both earn around £70K now. I did set up my own company as an additional sideline, but that was more for the challenge than the financial gain although it did roughly give me what I would have got had I been promoted another one or two times.As well as a clear long-term plan, it has always been helpful to have smaller goals - at first those were to put all income subject to higher rate tax into a pension for both my wife and myself. Later it became make maximum ISA contributions each year for us. That was very good both for discipline and never having much cash lying around to fritter away - once it went into pension or ISA it wouldn't be coming out again except in a dire emergency. I generally made maximum mortgage overpayments too, although mortgage was never a priority so took 10 years to repay. It has been fun playing around with 0% credit cards to get liquidity to meet these challenges, and those debts are the last debts we have after paying off mortgage recently.So I think rather than maximising savings, there was a lot of efficiency in the plan too. A huge help was deciding it was about a 10 year plan, probably slightly longer, and just settling down into a house for that period. We never felt inclined to move, refurb house significantly, get an expensive car, etc, because there has always been a finite horizon.Oddly, living in London has rather counter-intuitively helped a lot. Although house prices were high, house price growth has helped a lot as we will be moving to a cheaper house for retirement. The other costs of living in London don't affect us too much as we cycle to work and make our own food and prefer to go running and play musical instruments rather than spend lots in restaurants and pubs. Meanwhile we benefit from higher London salaries.So just really a case of taking advantage of what is provided rather than anything particularly insightful
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