How much to live on

moving_forward

Wow that's alot of spending at boots and Sainsbury's/argos

Terron

Just caught up with this thread.

I was made redundant in 2013 when 54 and haven't worked full time since.
I looked at my yearly spend then and it was £18k which I rounded up to £20k to allow a safety margin.
At the time £18k was Which's comfortable level for a single retired person. It has increased to £19k.
For a while my income was £300pm (contributory JSA). I could not manage to live on that.
I had savings, and worked out that I could spend £20k per year until taking my private pensions at 60 as planned, and then top them up until getting the state pension. So I did not need to take a job I didn't like. I worked in IT and there are few jobs available in the sector that will accept 50 year olds.
It did not feel right to live off my capital so I decided to try to put it to work. I bought some properties to let in my home town. Buying and renovating the first three cost about £270k (prices were still under 2007 levels where I bought. I could not get mortgages as I had no job.
The first property brought in ~£400pm after expenses, still not enough to live on, but an improvement on the JSA that had ended.
The second took my income to ~£900pm which covered my day to day expenses but not everything I was spending.
The third was a block of shops. At first only 1 of 3 was occupied but that took me up to £1600 pm which I could live on.
I was up to £2200 pm by my second year which was quite comfortable, then the tax man caught up with my changed circumstances, but only took about 10%.
So my experience is that Which's comfortable level is quite reasonable. 
Technically I was self-employed, not retired, but I was only doing a couple of hours a week, so my sisters insisted I wasn't working.

I had mostly paid down my mortgage on my home, but when it got to £4k (£17pm) and I could pay it off any time I wanted the worry went away so I didn't. It had been an endowment mortgage and the endowments did not reach the target. I remortgaged the flat I was living in and bought a cheaper but larger 3 bed end terrace near where I grew up, mortgage free. Letting my old home was not very profitable so I sold it in 2019.

I have never smoked nor drunk but I do read a lot of books. I don't do detailed budgets. I just spend less than I earn and have done almost all my life.

My private pensions started in 2019, but one is a fixed annuity (with a GAR of 10.6%), one is an old DB pension with no guarantee rises and none in practice. The other has inflation based rises capped at 5%. Together they come to ~£17k. With the BTL income I now have more disposable income than ever, though there was a drop of about £10k due to Covid, balanced by the reduced spending. I have paid enough voluntary NICs to maximize my state pension.

[Deleted User]

moving_forward said:

Wow that's alot of spending at boots and Sainsbury's/argos

We get credited extra points monthly for using the Sainsburys Credit Card too. We also seem to get lots of coupons for extra points plus double points on fuel etc….. It soon adds up!  It works well.

[Deleted User]

You did well Terron. 

Just amazed at much much you were able to save to be able to buy all those properties for cash!

I found it difficult to pay one mortgage at times let alone save.

Well done!

[Deleted User]

Likewise with Boots lots of coupons and offers. Being a member of the over 60 Club also helps.
I also buy my expensive make eau de toilettes there, which boosts the points!😏

moving_forward

We go for EAU de soap 🤣 but in fairness we do use lush toiletries so probally costs as much as your EAU de whatsit

otb666

@Terron i wondered about doing contribution JSA for 300pm  as i was made Redundant end of feb 22  at 55 think they wont let you decide on jobs now So decided against it as dont really want to be forced into any sort of work especially customer faced with Covid causes me anxiety even without Covid My hubby decided the same as me when made redundant earlier at 56 in Mar 21.  We have both already got enough NICs for full SP.  

Terron

[Deleted User] said:

You did well Terron. 

Just amazed at much much you were able to save to be able to buy all those properties for cash!

I found it difficult to pay one mortgage at times let alone save.

Well done!

Some of it was an inheritance as both my parents died in 2011. 

But after paying down my mortgage due to the endowment warnings so my payment was only £17pm I increased my savings with what was left rather than my spending.

Terron

otb666 said:

@Terron i wondered about doing contribution JSA for 300pm  as i was made Redundant end of feb 22  at 55 think they wont let you decide on jobs now So decided against it as dont really want to be forced into any sort of work especially customer faced with Covid causes me anxiety even without Covid My hubby decided the same as me when made redundant earlier at 56 in Mar 21.  We have both already got enough NICs for full SP.  

I believe that to begin with you can restrict your search to jobs you have done before, but after a while they expect you to be more flexible. Initially I looked for IT jobs, but the only ones that matched my skills were in the USA. But then I decided on going into letting, which counted as setting up my own business so work towards that counted as looking for a job. I spoke to a family friend who introduced me to a letting agent. Then I spent a week looking at properties, decided on one but was outbid. So more looking and this time I was successful. The job centre also put me on a course for those starting their own businesses and switched me from JSA to NEA. That was lower (£66pw instead of £75, dropping to £33 after 3 months).

Silvertabby

blue.peter said:

moving_forward said:

We always have wholemeal as white is tasteless.

I agree, but there are still some who eat white bread.

Granary for us.  My late dad would only eat white, not 'bread with bits in it', probably because his mum (born 1895) was adamant that 'brown bread was only for poor people'.  Seems that was down to the cheapest flour being the sweepings from the mill floor, which was brown because it included dirt and mouse droppings.