Retirement Living Standards

Nebulous2

I'm seeing some press reports - in the Independent for example - that the retirement living standards have been updated, but I can't find the new report, it may not be available yet.

I know we've collectively disagreed with these standards in the past, but I'd still like to read it.

As far as I can make out there have been some hefty increases - which would tally with some discussion here about personal inflation not matching published inflation.

Interestingly enough the moderate couple one has only gone up by 1.9% compared with 8.5% for the minimum one and 11.2% for the comfortable one.

Marcon

https://www.pensionsuk.org.uk/Press-Centre/Press-Releases/Article/Latest-Retirement-Living-Standards-show-change-of-UK-public-expectations

Shimrod

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6670908/retirement-living-standards

Can be found here - the headline say 2025 but the report is dated May 26. Actual report is at the bottom of the page

https://www.retirementlivingstandards.org.uk/details

Nebulous2

Thanks - it looks like some of the dates haven't changed, which confused me.

katejo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6670908/retirement-living-standards

I have just taken a look and still think the figures are too high (since they don't cover rent or mortgage for which more needs to be added). I am a mortgage free solo London resident who has just retired. My annual pension income is below the moderate figure but I feel pretty comfortably off. I have never earned £45 K even when full time and with a mortgage to pay,

GenX0212

I know it's possible to work it out but I always wondered why they don't publish the figures as a monthly spend rather than weekly, would make comparisons against personal outgoings easier. Who works out what their mobile bill is on a weekly basis?

scotsmantom

And the presentation is confusing. They show what they think you will need to spend not what you will need to have coming in gross to pay for these needs nett.

I agree, a monthly budgeting spreadsheet with the detail would be more helpful. Now if they would just pay the State Pension monthly and not 4 weekly that would be even more useful for budgeting!

NoMore

The gross amount would depend on the retirees income sources which could come from various different accounts with varying tax treatments making it hard to determine. I suppose you could assume it’s all from pensions but do you then assume the 25% tax free is available or been spent already?

The other reason they don’t give the gross, is because of the way they do the research. They basically interview people of varying ages, not just retirees, and ask them what they would expect to want to do (not spend) in retirement for each of the various categories. So it’s questions like how many holidays would you want per year, how often would you change your car. Again there is no reference to cost in these questions. Once they have established a list of these things for each category the researchers then price them up and that is how they produce the standards. The standards are based on a list of things people expect to do in retirement and then that is costed. So at no point do they consider income or budget just what people expect to be able to do in retirement.

mrklaw

lots of detail in the docs - how may rashers of bacon or cartons of tesco orange juice per week.

but the totals are fairly well summarised and easy enough to convert weeks to monthly figures. Here is the moderate couples for example.

		monthly
Food	220.11	£953.80
Alcohol	23.69	£102.65
Tobacco	0.00	£0.00
Clothing	48.82	£211.56
Water rates	13.24	£57.39
Council Tax	41.22	£178.63
Household insurances	4.62	£20.03
Fuel	47.99	£207.97
Other housing costs	22.95	£99.43
Household goods	43.27	£187.49
Household services	23.36	£101.21
Personal goods and services	84.87	£367.77
Motoring	81.82	£354.55
Other travel costs	10.57	£45.81
Social and cultural participation	203.58	£882.17
Total	870.11	£3,770.46

mrklaw

even the minimum couples food is £550 a month although that includes ‘catering’ is that takeaway but not eating out? Still seems high. We had a £600 budget with plenty of fresh food for scratch cooking with a family of four and two hungry teenagers..

some of it seems fine - fuel a bit high but we have a battery, £200 a month for clothes for two of you?

mrklaw

extracted the totals from the pdf and converted to yearly (well chatGPT did)