We're aware that some users are experiencing technical issues which the team are working to resolve. See the Community Noticeboard for more info. Thank you for your patience.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!

How much to live on

Options
1212213215217218304

Comments

  • WYSPECIAL
    WYSPECIAL Posts: 735 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    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?
    If your doing 2 hours a day for 5 days a week for those 6 weeks it works out at about £37 per hour. Sounds pretty brilliant pay for a short term commitment.
  • WYSPECIAL 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?
    If your doing 2 hours a day for 5 days a week for those 6 weeks it works out at about £37 per hour. Sounds pretty brilliant pay for a short term commitment.
    Ah it's 7 days....so 14 hours a week for 6 weeks.... 84 hours so £26/hour....but I'm taxed at 40% so I see about £15.

    It's all welcome though.
  • Nebulous2
    Nebulous2 Posts: 5,666 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    WYSPECIAL 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?
    If your doing 2 hours a day for 5 days a week for those 6 weeks it works out at about £37 per hour. Sounds pretty brilliant pay for a short term commitment.
    Ah it's 7 days....so 14 hours a week for 6 weeks.... 84 hours so £26/hour....but I'm taxed at 40% so I see about £15.

    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..... 
  • Savvy_Sue
    Savvy_Sue Posts: 47,309 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    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 mind
  • BooJewels
    BooJewels Posts: 3,006 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    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.
  • blue.peter
    blue.peter Posts: 1,358 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    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. net
    which 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!
  • Organgrinder
    Organgrinder Posts: 754 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    edited 16 April 2024 at 9:15AM
    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. 
Meet your Ambassadors

🚀 Getting Started

Hi new member!

Our Getting Started Guide will help you get the most out of the Forum

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 350.9K Banking & Borrowing
  • 253.1K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 453.5K Spending & Discounts
  • 243.9K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 598.7K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 176.9K Life & Family
  • 257.1K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 16.1K Discuss & Feedback
  • 37.6K Read-Only Boards

Is this how you want to be seen?

We see you are using a default avatar. It takes only a few seconds to pick a picture.