Retirement, how much?

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As a follow on from the retirement thread, how much do you need to be 'comfy?' Are you peeps spending more or less than anticipated? If you are taking advantage of a drawdown pension rather than an annuity is your pot dwindling faster than expected?

We lead a modest lifestyle and excluding capital expenditure (new cars, caravan, foriegn trip) reckon £20k pa should be enough is this realistic? With 2 of us oap should be at least £16k from the state, and with a defined pension taking us above this any private pension can therefore be used to fund early retirement, is this a dangerous tactic? And how big a private pension plot would you consider enough to fund 12 years with a seperate income of £10k pa available tax free?
 
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Drago

Legendary Member
I've got no mortgage, loans, or big credit card debts, somits plain sailing for me.. In terms of food, bills, sundry spends etc we get through about £1200 a month. Our pensions and rental income pay us more than double that, so were doing OK.
 

Debade

Über Member
Location
Connecticut, USA
I have worked on this question for some time. My suggestion is you use a calculator from one of the financial sites or there is one I like called Firecalc . It is USA based so may not be 100% perfect. Of course you can try more than one as I have done.
 

Spinney

Bimbleur extraordinaire
Location
Back up north
Mod note;
I think it is OK to have this separate, as it is specifically about finances. Dirk's existing thread is now up to 94 pages, and seems to be more about what people do with their time. Questions about finances are likely to get lost in the rest of the chat.

However, please DO keep this strictly about finances, or it will get merged.
 

delb0y

Legendary Member
Location
Quedgeley, Glos
We lead a modest lifestyle and excluding capital expenditure (new cars, caravan, foreign trip) reckon £20k pa should be enough is this realistic?

I'm not retired, but have started to give it some thought, and yes I do think this is realistic. My outgoings (those that I'll still have in retirement) come to £21k. Take out the dog costs (he's on more drugs than Keith Richards) and I'd be around the £20k mark. Alas, that's just the regular outgoings, and try as I might I can't work out a way of reducing them. So to have a bit of fun in retirement, too, even modestly, would need a couple more grand on top, I reckon.
 

ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
With my rent at its current level I would need an absolute minimum of £10k a year. I only have about £0.5k a year from a private pension and the state pension would be just over £8k a year so I would need a small amount of housing benefit/council tax benefit/pension credit/universal credit/(whatever they call it by then) to top me up. That doesn't allow for inflation, buying bike parts, taking holidays, or any potential future care needs.

£15k a year would be a LOT more comfortable!
 

cisamcgu

Legendary Member
Location
Merseyside-ish
But can you rely on the state pension ? It could, in theory at least, disappear after any given budget .. not likely I admit, but always possible ...
 

dodgy

Guest
If the state pension does go, I reckon it will go by way of means testing. If you've saved well and have a good private pension, you won't get a state pension.
If you've pissed it all up the wall, don't worry, you'll be ok.

;)

Apologies for that, back on topic.

The oft quoted standard is to aim for 50% of your salary when in retirement. That seems like quite a high bar to reach.
 

screenman

Legendary Member
If the state pension does go, I reckon it will go by way of means testing. If you've saved well and have a good private pension, you won't get a state pension.
If you've pissed it all up the wall, don't worry, you'll be ok.

;)

Apologies for that, back on topic.

The oft quoted standard is to aim for 50% of your salary when in retirement. That seems like quite a high bar to reach.

Or if for some other reason you may not have been able to save, there are many you know.

Not forgetting of course that two people can pay the same amount of their income into a pot over x amount of years and one pot will perform better than the other.
 

dodgy

Guest
Or if for some other reason you may not have been able to save, there are many you know.

Not forgetting of course that two people can pay the same amount of their income into a pot over x amount of years and one pot will perform better than the other.

Yeah, I was just being facetious, I know there are plenty of edge cases.
 
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