Actually it’s more of a two fold question.

How much would you need per month to live a contented but not extravagant life for ever more?

How much would you need in savings, investments or stuffed under the mattress to achieve that regular monthly income?

Lets assume you have no mortgage costs as that levels the field up and down the country a bit, so we’re just talking about bills, food and a few little luxuries from time to time.

Would you prefer to give up work entirely or would you rather have a retirement pot that paid for all the essentials and you did occasional/part time work to pay for the big ticket items like bikes and travel?

It’s a bit of an old chestnut but it’s Friday so why not indulge ourselves in a little fantasy financial planning.

Me – around £4-500/month.

Depends upon voracity of coke/hookers habit.

Police Constables pension does it for me 😆

what be this retire you talk about? Nobody in the future will be allowed to retire so I’m going to do a kickstarter to create a company doing discreet body removal from office desks and places of work.

I reckon as a rough rule o’ thumb, currently to have £15k/ann gross you need a pension pot of £500k.

This much:

At 42 years old, with two kids under 8, and a hoooge mortgage, retirement rarely crosses my mind!

I guess to support me + Mrs Freeagent I think we’d be looking at a grand a month+
We’re both paying into pension schemes (she’s a teacher and i’m in Engineering) so I’m hoping we’ll at least be able to survive on our pensions when the day comes, even if we’re not dripping with cash.

as a rough rule of thumb, if you’re under 60 now, you are ***ked.

Me – around £4-500/month.

Really? That seems remarkably frugal.

My back of an envelope calcs household bills on their own comes to £435 per month for me. So that doesn’t leave a lot left over for lifes fripperies, inflation, running a car/public transport costs or the more essential things like food.

Me – around £4-500/month.

Is this assuming rent paid by the state, as if you own your own house doesn’t really cover household expenses, especially one-offs ie boiler?

For us I’m working on us needing/wanting (current monies) £30-35k pa.

Current state pension entitlement plus our various pensions gets us well past that – and the next 10 years should see us able to put a bigger buffer in.

I think, if I were state pension age today, I’d want £20,000 gross pa to be happy assuming I could do something I enjoyed to earn a little extra. If £6000 pa were coming from the state pension that would leave me needing another £14,000 pa so maybe a pot of about £450,000 to buy an annuity with.

I really need to tot up all my old pension benefits so I can think about how unhappy my old age is going to be…..

We did this one recently:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/how-much-could-you-live-on-very-early-retirement-question

I really struggle with the concept of ‘saving’ to retire. Rather ‘retire’ / work part time whilst I’m young enough and healthy enough to enjoy it and work full time (in an office) a little longer in old age when I’m more infirm ?

I think the two of us (would be a bit awkward if I retired while she still went to work) could live comfortably on £2k a month with our current mortgage. We have enough equity to downsize/move north and go mortgage free so you could halve that. I reckon that £1k a month would need about £250k in fairly safe investments. I think I’d want a little more though to have some nice holidays and make the most of the time.

Is this assuming rent paid by the state, as if you own your own house doesn’t really cover household expenses, especially one-offs ie boiler?

I read the question and took the assumption into consideration.

I also wouldnt bloody well be living in one of the most expensive countries on the planet with limited income neither. That would be stupid.

We had a pension talk at work recently, and they said the average pension pot in the UK of current working people will work out at around 7K a year excluding state pension.
Their advice was to save as much as you can for retirement, however I am under the real impression I will not be able to access my pension until I am 70.
I am thinking is it worth being so frugal now just to have a bigger pension pot? or enjoy much of it while I can?! argghh.

I think around £25k/year to have a nice life style but less would work.

I could retire now – as long as the wife keeps working…not sure what she’d think of that.

I’m aiming for a pension pot of £500k, 20 odd years to achieve that. Got ISAs too which is there as a backup for the time being but keeping it until I’m old seems a waste.

I have life insurance that runs until I am 65, so that is the family taken care of. at 64 – jump in front of a really busy train just to leave being a total twunt.

I am under the real impression I will not be able to access my pension until I am 70.

state maybe, rules on private pension access are being relaxed by the day…

I’ll be retiring to somewhere sunny and cheap to live and have no intention to live beyond a point where I can no longer look after myself.

not if you have a Teachers Pension! If I decide to take out early, they will tax the hell out of it, so it leaves me with even less.

Before tax or after?

£1k a month after tax is going to require considerably more than that pre-tax.

But you knew that already of course.

Edit- and remember to “take up smoking” before buying your annuity. You can always “quit” shortly afterwards. I assume you still get better annuities if they think you’re going to die soon – no?

Quirrel,I know (hope) it is a joke BUT check the T&C’s of your insurance and you usually find suicide is not covered in the policy.

As for winging about a teachers pension, take a look around at other employee/employer contribution ratios then crawl back and keep quiet!

How about if the wife murders me?

How about if the wife murders me?

Provided you don’t have her down as the beneficiary then that sounds fine!

I’m aiming for house paid, 50k tax free lump for some adventure before dementure and a further 50k to provide a small top up to the state pension.

I wont be rich but I wont be hungry.

Crawl back and keep quiet?! Rude. I sense some animosity over the fact that I have a fairly decent pension.
Because I do have a decent pension, it still entitles me to moan about it, just like if I had a good car I could still moan about it despite others not having a similar one.

mj27 – that was a bit rude don’t you think? MrWhyte has a point about teacher pensions though.

We are caught in a catch 22 – either stay in the job until we are 70 or retire earlier and get hammered on our pensions.

Before you start crowing about how teachers have it easy etc ask yourself if you would want your children taught by a 68 year old.

I agree with an earlier statement though I think we are all a bit effed when it comes to pensions – state/private/public.

I guess how much you need when you retire all depends on what you want to do and what you have done. i.e. if you have paid everything off and given your kids their inheritance early then your pension doesn’t need to ‘do’ a lot other than keep you going.

If however you have big plans for when you retire then you need a lot more in order to retire.

Personally I can’t see myself retiring. I think I will be worked until I die.

Then I will probably have to pay for my own funeral.

Ah well, happy Friday (world happiness day remember!).

I dont really want to retire.

Sure I’ll put my feet up a bit (more) but I’ll also want to keep my hand in with a few projects/consultancy pieces at least until I start smelling of wee (more).

If anything I’ve been semi retired since I was 35.

The subject is in quite sharp focus for me. Mrs BigJohn & I are both able to get 10% off in B&Q on Wednesdays and get into cinemas at half price. I think in a few years time the concept of retirement will be seen as a strange experiment that belonged firmly in the 20th century.

Retirement is dull. Find ways of getting paid for doing stuff you like and are good at. Don’t set silly deadlines so you when you wake up, if the weather’s good you can go for a ride or a sail or stick the tent in the back of the car and bugger off to the coast for a day or two.

As you get into your 80s your spending drops anyway so don’t worry too much.

Surely when you retire you just ‘potter’. I’d love that.

not if you have a Teachers Pension! If I decide to take out early, they will tax the hell out of it, so it leaves me with even less.

Amazing that anyone can come onto a private pension thread and moan about the teachers scheme!!!

At what point does it say ‘discussion for private pension only’?
I also have money elsewhere that I am saving to put towards a pension, so it is in fact relevant to anyone who wants to retire.

I retired early from teaching (after 35 yrs) and the lump sum wasn’t taxed and it went straight onto the stock market. My pension is only about a grand less per month than I was being paid for being a head of faculty, which equates to £50pd difference, hardly worth getting out of bed for. I do get taxed on my pension but only at the low rates.
I’m loving my retirement and MrsMC is looking to do the same at the earliest opportunity which starts next year. However we have no mortgages and our overheads are low. Being able to fly outside of school holidays has been a boon, this year I will have been on more planes than ever previously and I’m not spending capital assets.

I have not stated that teachers have it easy, that can be saved for others to start on another thread, I have been a teacher in a former life.

My comment was around the employee/employer contribution ratios for teachers compared to other professions, not working until 68.

I too have a pension that some would be considered reasonable but I will only know in 30 years time. If you wish to retire early then that is a change to your pension agreement and for this reason you get penalised. Just stop teaching, and claim your pension at a later date, though you will need to fund the gap between these two dates.

mj27 – yeah that’s the way most of us have come round to thinking – it’s a bit of a tricky situation because it would mean missing out of x years paying into a good pension.

Actually teacher pensions are only below civil servants, judges and mp’s in terms or well terms.

sorry I misunderstood your comment mj27.

I do like the idea of just pottering about though!

Just stop teaching, and claim your pension at a later date, though you will need to fund the gap between these two dates.

I assume the teachers pension is a defined benefit scheme? You need to do the numbers on this as taking a reduced pension early may mean you are better off in the long run than waiting for normal pension age.

You need to know your minimum pension age, your normal pension age, the method of calculating the defined benefit and the actuarial reduction tables. All scheme have different rules, but you might be pleasantly surprised.