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How much to live on
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Organgrinder said:So the weekend has started with the offer of another exam marking contract......two for June/July and 3,600 or so questions to mark over 6 weeks for approx £2,200.
It's something I intend carrying on with once fully retired. It's just a couple of times a year for in total about ten weeks work for about 2 hours a day. The pay isn't brilliant but I usually enjoy it and once fully retired will help pay for our holidays/help not have to drawdown on the pension.
Does anyone else do anything similar?2 -
WYSPECIAL said:Organgrinder said:So the weekend has started with the offer of another exam marking contract......two for June/July and 3,600 or so questions to mark over 6 weeks for approx £2,200.
It's something I intend carrying on with once fully retired. It's just a couple of times a year for in total about ten weeks work for about 2 hours a day. The pay isn't brilliant but I usually enjoy it and once fully retired will help pay for our holidays/help not have to drawdown on the pension.
Does anyone else do anything similar?
It's all welcome though.2 -
Organgrinder said:So the weekend has started with the offer of another exam marking contract......two for June/July and 3,600 or so questions to mark over 6 weeks for approx £2,200.
It's something I intend carrying on with once fully retired. It's just a couple of times a year for in total about ten weeks work for about 2 hours a day. The pay isn't brilliant but I usually enjoy it and once fully retired will help pay for our holidays/help not have to drawdown on the pension.
Does anyone else do anything similar?
After retiring I have had a few enquiries, mainly via LinkedIn, to spend a couple of hours chatting to interested parties about the market in UK, Europe etc. in exchange for monetary reward.
I have never responded for three reasons;
1) I had a good relationship with my ex employer and colleagues, and I would feel guilty about giving info away.
2) Presumably would have to declare it as self employed income and complicate my otherwise simple tax affairs.
3) I did not retire, to start work again ! Especially as I worked OMY ( or three) to make sure I had enough money.5 -
Organgrinder said:WYSPECIAL said:Organgrinder said:So the weekend has started with the offer of another exam marking contract......two for June/July and 3,600 or so questions to mark over 6 weeks for approx £2,200.
It's something I intend carrying on with once fully retired. It's just a couple of times a year for in total about ten weeks work for about 2 hours a day. The pay isn't brilliant but I usually enjoy it and once fully retired will help pay for our holidays/help not have to drawdown on the pension.
Does anyone else do anything similar?
It's all welcome though.
I work part-time in a junior management role (A drop from my previous full-time responsibilities and salary) in the NHS for less than that. I'm still on 20% tax though, with my DB pension.
Like you it's still welcome. A long day a week is roughly equivalent to the state pension, so helps bridge the gap until that comes into payment.....2 -
DH has done University invigilating. I've considered it myself but he has to get up so early on working days!
He's also done polling station work, but decided against it this year. It's another very early start, and a VERY long day.Signature removed for peace of mind2 -
Organgrinder said:So the weekend has started with the offer of another exam marking contract......two for June/July and 3,600 or so questions to mark over 6 weeks for approx £2,200.
It's something I intend carrying on with once fully retired. It's just a couple of times a year for in total about ten weeks work for about 2 hours a day. The pay isn't brilliant but I usually enjoy it and once fully retired will help pay for our holidays/help not have to drawdown on the pension.
Does anyone else do anything similar?Not me.Since I retired, I've had quite a few approaches from headhunters (via LinkedIn) wanting to persuade me to apply for jobs that they were trying to fill. I wasn't even slightly interested in any of them, even though I was well-qualified for some. I now had enough money coming in from my pensions to live comfortably. And I'd only ever worked because I needed the money to live on. Since I had no need of more, money was no longer an incentive. It's a nice position to be in. I'm my own master. No deadlines, no need to get out of bed before I'm ready to do so, no commitments that I don't choose to take on.6 -
Love this thread - just being made redundant at 56 and have a lot of health issues. So it is helpful I had a financial adviser who told me I needed £24k to live on!! So been writing down my outgoings for a couple of months definately barking up the wrong tree. The maximum I spent was 1800 one month due to car costs and prescriptions.
I'm going to see if I can not work - have two work pensions £18k a year and £160k in savings. I have no one to leave it to - so going to gradually spent it to avoid not working. I own my house so all is good. Going to cut my phone bill and not go on a £25k cruise!!! It would be so nice not to have to work again x I need a little side hussle though.8 -
Good morning @KittyS - it's the only way to work it out - do your own numbers. Once you get into the mindset and familiar with your own spending, you'll perhaps find there are places you can cut down or out - especially if you're not going to be working and will have a different routine.
A couple of things jumped out at me - and apologies if you're already on it - but you mentioned prescriptions - if you have regular items, you can save quite a lot by buying a pre-payment certificate, which is £111.60 for 12 months (will be £114.50 from 1 May, when prescriptions also rise to £9.90 each) which if you have 1 item a month would be cheaper - although paying for that might have been what you meant.
Also, your £160k in savings - I hope that's earning a good rate of interest for you - if you had that in savings at around 5% and interest paid monthly, it could earn you around £650 per month - enough to top up your pensions by a decent amount.1 -
KittyS said:Love this thread - just being made redundant at 56 and have a lot of health issues. So it is helpful I had a financial adviser who told me I needed £24k to live on!! So been writing down my outgoings for a couple of months definately barking up the wrong tree. The maximum I spent was 1800 one month due to car costs and prescriptions.£1,800 a month sounds plausible. However, I don't think that a couple of months is really enough on which to base an assessment. I'd recommend going through your bank statements for at least a year, and preferably more. You don't need a detailed breakdown of your spending for this purpose. You just need to see how much you spend over a longer period, not where every penny goes.When your adviser said £24k a year to live on, was s/he referring to the gross or net amount? £24k gross salary/pension comes to £1,809.50 net for a basic rate taxpayer with the standard personal allowance. In other words, it's almost exactly what you calculated.By the way, redundancy at 56 rings a loud bell here. That's exactly what happened to me in 2015. I made a conscious decision not to look for another job, and have no regrets. Your savings are considerably greater than mine were then, but my private pensions totalled significantly more than yours.A bit of number crunching (probably duplicating some of what you've already done) says:£18,000 p.a. gross = £16,914 p.a. net = £1,409.50 p.m. netwhich leaves about £400 p.m. to find from savings (if your £1,800 p.m. is reliable).£160,000 / (£400 * 12) = 33.33 years - but this is ignoring inflation and interest.Your state pension will, in any case, kick in long before that.So retirement at 56 sounds, on the basis of this very crude calculation, as if it might well be manageable. Good luck!2
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Careful.....that amount of interest would result in a tax bill of £1350 pa and would diminish in real terms.
That said @KittyS said the financial advisor said £24k was needed so with the £18k in pensions it's definitely doable imo.
Basically there's a £6k shortfall pa (if we're talking gross) which at 67 is more than made up for by the state pension.
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