How much to live on

Albermarle

littlemissbossy said:

Me 51 Hubby 56

Hubby has been retired for about 18 months, I'm reducing my hours from 3 days per week to 1 day per week from March 23

Council Tax 173.00
Gas & Elect 150.00
Line rental & broadband 30.00
Sky 56.00
Water 33
Charity 11.50
TV Licence 13.50
Lottery 16.00
Food/drink/toiletries etc 170.00
Petrol 80.00
Going out 150.00
Car bills (insurance/road tax/service) 45.00
House insurance 10.00
Misc 20.00

= £958 per month x 12 = £11500 ish

My personal pension contributions 1560 pa
Holidays 2800 pa
New car 2500 pa
House (repairs/renewals etc) 2500 pa
Contingency 2000 pa

£22860 per year

Hope I haven't missed anything.


eta: my employer pays for my mobile phone and hubby has PAYG £10 every three months or so.

If these are historical costs, you may need to increase them 10% due to inflation, going forward.

littlemissbossy

Albermarle said:

littlemissbossy said:

Me 51 Hubby 56

Hubby has been retired for about 18 months, I'm reducing my hours from 3 days per week to 1 day per week from March 23

Council Tax 173.00
Gas & Elect 150.00
Line rental & broadband 30.00
Sky 56.00
Water 33
Charity 11.50
TV Licence 13.50
Lottery 16.00
Food/drink/toiletries etc 170.00
Petrol 80.00
Going out 150.00
Car bills (insurance/road tax/service) 45.00
House insurance 10.00
Misc 20.00

= £958 per month x 12 = £11500 ish

My personal pension contributions 1560 pa
Holidays 2800 pa
New car 2500 pa
House (repairs/renewals etc) 2500 pa
Contingency 2000 pa

£22860 per year

Hope I haven't missed anything.


eta: my employer pays for my mobile phone and hubby has PAYG £10 every three months or so.

If these are historical costs, you may need to increase them 10% due to inflation, going forward.

They're all current figures, except the council tax... I don't know what that is yet.

My gas and electric have gone from £75 pm to £150 pm and that's after cutting down usage, eek!

My broadband contract ends in a couple of months and I think I may be able to get that down to around the £24 mark.

[Deleted User]

Many thanks littlemissbossy for your input. How does your planned income after March 2023 compare to your expenditure? 

littlemissbossy

[Deleted User] said:

Many thanks littlemissbossy for your input. How does your planned income after March 2023 compare to your expenditure? 

Yes, my husband has a fixed term annuity, paying till SP age, plus my wage and savings interest will cover the expenditure, without the need to use our savings cushion.  If/when interest rates fall we will dip into savings.

Daffodil1234

That looks like a very frugal budget in some areas LittleMissBossy but well done especially on the food / drink / toiletries.

Are you also budgeting for dental / optical / general health items as I find these can be quite expensive ?

littlemissbossy

Daffodil1234 said:

That looks like a very frugal budget in some areas LittleMissBossy but well done especially on the food / drink / toiletries.

Are you also budgeting for dental / optical / general health items as I find these can be quite expensive ?

Yes, good point, so far we have used our £2000 contingency pot for those things but I guess as we get older these costs will increase. 

[Deleted User]

For teachers retired and non retired as well as support staff I have recently joined this forum whose link is below. Quite useful comments and suggestions on a number of things including retirement. I contribute under a slightly different name. You have to register and get approved but it could be useful.
https://staffroom.boards.net/
There is also this site which offers excellent advice on teacher’s retirement including video tutorials.
https://dfountain.co.uk/about/

Billy-no-Money

New poster here!

My username is Billy-no-Money. I chose it because 15 years ago I had nearly £50k in unsecured debts, and the Debt Free Wannabe board was a place where I could seek support without being judged.

Well here I am, turning 59 this year, mortgage paid off in 2019 and seriously looking at retiring at 60 in 2024 – hard to believe. I went from stressing over minimum card payments to a £1000+ surplus each month, and rather than let my lifestyle grow to take up the slack I decided to target early retirement.

I’m married but we keep our finances separate, it made sense at the time we met – she’s older then me with a small Civil Service pension and just happens to get her State Pension the month after I turn 60 so as a household that’s a big milestone, giving us a lot more choices. It means her net income will be about £1400 a month.

Looking at current outgoings (as an ex-DFW my records are pretty good) my share of the bills and personal spends comes to about £1600, including one foreign holiday and a comfortable lifestyle but excluding car finance. I’ve adjusted that for anticipated price rises by about 10% (more for energy).

(My net pay is £3170 and the surplus goes to help my wife bridge the gap to her state pension, and we bought a car brand new in 2021 to be paid off completely just before I turn 60).

I’m one of the lucky ones who’s had DB pensions all my working life – a Civil Service Alpha started in 2015, and a private sector final salary pension from previous employment, including older pensions transferred in. I requested an illustration for the private pension, as it came up with:

               £32k at 60 without lump sum or

               £24k plus £160k lump sum.

I think they’ve made an error (which I won’t go into here) as my calculations come to:

               £27k at 60 without lump sum or

               £20k plus approx. £130k. (based on same factor as the illustration).

 

I’m working with the lower figures, but if they come back to me and say the illustration is correct then it’s an even easier decision!

My CS pension gives me about another £9k if I don’t take the lump sum, so in total about £29k plus £130k cash, or about £2100 net per month at 60.

I’d then have seven years until State Pension, so once I’ve put aside cash for the new roof that everybody seems to need I don’t need to be obsessive about saving the lump sum but learned habits don’t change easily! I don't come from a long-lived family (my father died at 57, mother at 71) so it would be silly to hold onto it without good reason.

I’m now expecting the Government to change the rules to screw it all up for me – there’s plenty of time.

 

Albermarle

Billy-no-Money said:

New poster here!

My username is Billy-no-Money. I chose it because 15 years ago I had nearly £50k in unsecured debts, and the Debt Free Wannabe board was a place where I could seek support without being judged.

Well here I am, turning 59 this year, mortgage paid off in 2019 and seriously looking at retiring at 60 in 2024 – hard to believe. I went from stressing over minimum card payments to a £1000+ surplus each month, and rather than let my lifestyle grow to take up the slack I decided to target early retirement.

I’m married but we keep our finances separate, it made sense at the time we met – she’s older then me with a small Civil Service pension and just happens to get her State Pension the month after I turn 60 so as a household that’s a big milestone, giving us a lot more choices. It means her net income will be about £1400 a month.

Looking at current outgoings (as an ex-DFW my records are pretty good) my share of the bills and personal spends comes to about £1600, including one foreign holiday and a comfortable lifestyle but excluding car finance. I’ve adjusted that for anticipated price rises by about 10% (more for energy).

(My net pay is £3170 and the surplus goes to help my wife bridge the gap to her state pension, and we bought a car brand new in 2021 to be paid off completely just before I turn 60).

I’m one of the lucky ones who’s had DB pensions all my working life – a Civil Service Alpha started in 2015, and a private sector final salary pension from previous employment, including older pensions transferred in. I requested an illustration for the private pension, as it came up with:

               £32k at 60 without lump sum or

               £24k plus £160k lump sum.

I think they’ve made an error (which I won’t go into here) as my calculations come to:

               £27k at 60 without lump sum or

               £20k plus approx. £130k. (based on same factor as the illustration).

 

I’m working with the lower figures, but if they come back to me and say the illustration is correct then it’s an even easier decision!

My CS pension gives me about another £9k if I don’t take the lump sum, so in total about £29k plus £130k cash, or about £2100 net per month at 60.

I’d then have seven years until State Pension, so once I’ve put aside cash for the new roof that everybody seems to need I don’t need to be obsessive about saving the lump sum but learned habits don’t change easily! I don't come from a long-lived family (my father died at 57, mother at 71) so it would be silly to hold onto it without good reason.

I’m now expecting the Government to change the rules to screw it all up for me – there’s plenty of time.

 

Well done for turning your life around, and for building up some DB pension provision.

After being in debt, having approx £40K pa in guaranteed income, means you now have  pensions  worth around a Million Pounds, maybe a bit more.
Add in the state pensions and you are firmly in the 'very comfortable' camp. Enjoy !

Billy-no-Money

Thanks @Albermarle, even if the final numbers aren’t quite at that level they won’t be far off.

The point is that someone with debts is likely to deprioritise their pension, while I never had that choice and thank goodness I didn’t. I had very poor knowledge about managing money, but was protected from my own mistakes by the way things were done back then!