How much to live on

sunnyflower

Wow Baron, you sound very busy! No time for work 🤣
My pension is £14000, give or take.
My husbands will be nowhere near that, we are going to go through the options nearer the time. However if I pop my clogs first he will get half which is reassuring. We will have ample for bills & daily living, and savings for the unexpected !
His lump sum will pay for a cruise booked for 2024, 16 nights in the Med which will probably be our last one as we are aiming for  short breaks / weekends away.
We also have three lots of grandchildren so will have more time with them.

[Deleted User]

sunnyflower  Many thanks for your response. Always a pleasure to hear the plans and thoughts of others. Never say probably the last one, you never know!  . When your state pensions arrive things will be more than fine. Take care.

Lifematters

[Deleted User] said:

Yes sunnyflower I agree. Life is for living! Obviously within means, but no plans here to be well off in the graveyard! Are you able to give any figures regarding your plans? Always useful for others on here to see ‘how much to live on’ others have!

I have actually booked four trips abroad this week covering the period October 2022 to September 2023! 

I decided to rebook the cancelled cruise for October this year rather than September. The good news is that it cost £700 less than my original booking! My older relative really wants to go and has improved health wise. It’s 7 days visiting France, Portugal and Spain.

I have also booked a flight for a solo trip to Vancouver next March for one week. The flight was excellent value and by using the remains of a travel voucher only cost me £400 return in premium economy too! Just need to book the hotel and a few trips out and about in Vancouver. Very excited, I last went to Canada nearly 40 years ago when I went to Toronto,Ottawa and Niagara.

I have also reserved a villa in Cyprus for a couple of weeks next May. Other family members will also join me. Flights yet to be booked but my avios total will help with those.

Finally I have booked a Fly/Cruise for September 2023 to Malta,Croatia and Corfu. Treated myself to a balcony cabin even though for a single person a bit pricey! Cruise lines still seem a bit behind the times regarding provision for solo travellers. Very limited number of single cabins and they are usually very pokey without even a window! 

The September 2023 cruise will be paid for by this year’s regular saver. The other trips will come out of my travel budget which should cover them ok plus of course payments from others who will be travelling with me.

I thought it was about time to get cracking on the plans. I have been semi retired for 5 years and only had 3 trips away, so need to catch up!

I also have a family wedding in October which means a 2 night stay in a London hotel. Have budgeted for that plus a new suit and wedding present. Looking forward to it.

Garden is beginning to look good after all my recent planting and purchases. Just need to paint the front 5 bar gate and take delivery of a new wooden table for outdoors eating! Plan is to spend June July and August enjoying the garden and local events. All quite inexpensive!

Still plan to finish part-time working on July 22nd and enter full retirement. However nice to know that work is there should I need it!

Have a good Platinum Jubilee Bank Holiday long weekend!

Your planned trips sound wonderful Baron_Dale, I love to hear other peoples travel plans. 

We stayed in Vancouver for several nights before a cruise to Alaska. I used air bnb to stay at this lovely apartment in downtown Vancouver  https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/5826630?source_impression_id=p3_1654181436_7IZJz%2BoQ2H2wtHNW.  It was perfect for our needs. I am always swayed on accommodation if they have a good coffee machine   

I would definitely recommend a bus ride to Granville Island while in Vancouver. A lovely place to spend the day.  

BooJewels

sunnyflower said:

I have been reading with great interest.
[snip]
My fear though is running out of money, but on the other hand we want to have a nice life together whilst we have our health & strength.
Anyone else feel the same?

I too read this thread without contributing much - I'm not sure if it panics or reassures me.

I'm about the same age, but don't have any pension provision, as I've been part time self employed for many years.  I've spent so much time recently looking after elderly parents, poorly husband and then their various estates and clearing and selling a house, that I've not really done much work either.  I have however inherited my late husband's pension pot as a lump sum and my bequest from parents.  So I'm currently living off capital and just starting to get towards the light at the end of the tunnel - with about half a storage unit still to sort/clear.

So I'm intending getting back to some working to create some income to make it all go a bit further.  But yes, running out of money is my biggest fear.  I seem to have gone through more already than I wanted - but it was sort of expected and budgeted for - like buying tools to do jobs because what my husband used is too heavy for me, or jobs I can't manage without something extra to assist, paying tradesmen for jobs we did between us etc.  Before long, I should be better set up to manage on my own and spending a bit less monthly.  My mortgage is long since paid off, so my largest expenditure at the moment is council tax and gas and electricity.

I originally did some calculations and thought the money would last well enough (allowing 3% inflation), supplementing my state pension when I qualify for that - but the current inflation rates have junked all that careful working out.  I have two holidays planned - and the money is already put aside for those - as I've not had a break for about 3 years now, but carried on saving anyway.  My sister and I have booked a cottage in the UK for later in the year which is paid for and we've got a big trip to Switzerland planned for next year, postponed from 2020.

Gin_and_Milk

I got my DB pension forecast the other day, and when I retire in 13 years (I'll be 60), I will receive a pension of £19300.  The plan is to ensure I have more than this, and although I'm not a big spender, the recent increase in inflation, living costs etc, does make me wonder if it's enough if, for whatever reason I'm unable to increase the amount.
Most posts I read about retirement are about couples, and some seem to manage on the same amount as me, so I'm hoping I'll be OK, especially as the mortgage will have been paid off by then.

maisie_cat

It's now 3 years since we retired and 21/2 since we moved into our forever home in Wales.
We took hubby's single pension early and left my 4 works pensions where they are deferred for another year. If something happens and we need the money we could take them early.

In all we are spending more on many things and less on some things than my forecasts.
CT, water, energy and food are all higher, holidays, days out and going out for lunch are less, mainly because they are an easy saving and Covid prevented them for a long time.
Our energy costs have increased the most, the electricity by 65% a year and wood pellets by 25% since last year, the total increase from £1500 to £2400.
Luckily we live near the coast so it always feels like we are on holiday and the beach is walkable.

The main thing I didn't anticipate is the capital items, and house maintenance/repair, but not in a way that we cannot manage, we draw from savings for hefty bills. 
It feels like every month something happens that is a result of previous failure to maintain or just because it's old, yesterday a slate tile fell off the roof, it had previously delaminated and been glued, the glue failed! I'm now concerned that many more of the tiles are that fragile.
This week we are  doing tree work, we cannot get a tree surgeon to call back so we're doing it ourselves, but PPE is expensive. 
Now the weather is warmer we need to look at the wood burner, it needs new parts but is no longer made and the parts are hard to find, I have a horrible feeling that we'll be forced to get a new one, another chunk of savings!
On the upside, we had potatoes yesterday that regrew having been left behind last year, this morning I'm dehydrating wild garlic from our little woodland, little things like home grown veg and the sun shining make up for decades of working in stressful offices.

Gin_and_Milk

On the upside, we had potatoes yesterday that regrew having been left behind last year, this morning I'm dehydrating wild garlic from our little woodland, little things like home grown veg and the sun shining make up for decades of working in stressful offices.

Ooh, how do you dehydrate wild garlic?  There is some which grows around the corner from us every year, and every year we say we'll pick some and use it, but never really know how, so end up leaving it!

blue.peter

Gin_and_Milk said:

I got my DB pension forecast the other day, and when I retire in 13 years (I'll be 60), I will receive a pension of £19300.  The plan is to ensure I have more than this, and although I'm not a big spender, the recent increase in inflation, living costs etc, does make me wonder if it's enough if, for whatever reason I'm unable to increase the amount.

It depends very much on your lifestyle.

£19,300 would give approximately £1,500 a month (£18,000 a year) net of tax. I've assumed a personal allowance of £12,500 and a tax rate of 20% in that calculation. You won't have to pay NI on your pension, and nor will you be paying pension contributions.

If you look back up this thread to 30 December (page 68), you'll find a breakdown of my 2021 spending. It comes to about £11,300 a year. So I could do it. Whether you could depends, as I said, on your own lifestyle. (Fortunately, my actual income is more than this: I'm still able to save some money each month.) But if you wanted to live on this and, say, buy a new car or move house, you'd need some capital in savings or investments as well. Oh, and I pay band D council tax, with a 25% single-occupancy discount. Obviously, inflation (especially of energy costs) means that this year's spending will be higher.

I'm also single. My mortgage was paid off several years ago. That's critical, in my opinion.

Obviously, if you can fund a greater pension, that'll make life easier for you in retirement.

BooJewels

How is inflation factored in to pension forecasts - not having one, I don't know?

Because if the payout remains at £19,300 - in 13 years time - if my quick and dirty inflation calculator works properly - that will have the same buying power as £6,800 does today - so in rudimentary terms, less than 600 quid a month.  Your pension would have to keep pace with inflation to buy you the same as it would today.  Hopefully, the average inflation in the next 13 years won't actually remain at the current record levels.

MovingForwards

@BooJewels just a quick one as I'm on a break:

DC pensions are based on how stocks, share etc perform.

DB pensions rise each year by upto a ?% (mine are max 5%)