If you are retired and have a good life, can I ask how much pension you draw?

[User5512]

I tried some calculators and they all gave me vastly different numbers.

I’d like to know (roughly) how much money does a couple need to have a good life in retirement.

If you are retired, would you be kind enough to give me a rough idea of your lifestyle and how much pension you get?

thanks :)

Yes I think we are agreeing.

Thanks all for this thread. I do worry if I'm saving enough and it's reassuring me. Definitely not going to be one of the mega-pensioned after a working life mostly spent self-employed.

My future holiday plans in retirement, fwiw, are to book apartments out of season for longer periods of time. If you look on Airbnb you can sometimes get quite a long time for not that much money out of school holidays, and then organise your own flights.

My advice is to split your money over a range of things. We have two state pensions and a small occupational pension which give us an annual income of about £37000 between the two of us. That's plenty to live on day to day.

Then we have savings which are paying a pretty good rate of interest at the moment so bringing in some £7000 pa.

Then we have a 'pension pot' that my husband built up - we drew down from it to cover the years before our state pensions kicked in but the growth has been great and 7 years in we have the same amount we started out with.

And then we have the family house which we could always sell and downsize should push come to shove.

So we can live well but are now beginning to be short of TIME to do all the things we would like to in good health When you're age begins with a 7, not a 6, you start to realise how short it is. Don't wait too long to retire. You can't take it with you.

Be careful how long you are away overseas I think it's 90days before it can affect things like state pension. Just look into it

Oh, I was more thinking about a month or so, but yes, longer would be possible! Thanks @Spectre8

Oh yesh thsts okay then. I only know cos I'm looking into being a sun chaser and I don't want to live through cold winters so staying somewhere warmer for a few months...will have to plan it carefully like go away and come back for a week then jet off again 😁

Hoping I can rent my place out to cover some of the expense of going abroad..we shall what happens

I have no idea what to put aside, though I've been putting into a private pension for decades. We currently manage on £26k combined income (two kids at school, mortgage paid off), I don't want to put loads in for a lifestyle that I don't need if I could do with the money now. Considering I'll have no mortgage and the kids won't be reliant on us, I can't imagine we need more than that a year.

Yes, we and every member of my family blighted by illness and redundancy at critical times in life. I would estimate we would have had twice as much retirement savings if bad things hadn't happened. Even worse for my siblings.

We'd always calculated our retirement on both having our own pension, both state pensions, ISAs and other savings. Always had joint money.

I took my state pension when I was 66 earlier this year (although I'm still working 4 days a week) as even though I get taxed at 40% I wanted the balance in our bank account as if I died it would all be lost. My wife was due to retire in early 2025.

Big holiday planned (and saved for) for next year to celebrate.

Sadly, my wife passed away last month so everything has been thrown into turmoil.

So anyone talking about deferring, it isn't guaranteed.

I’m very sorry for your loss @billyt

Thanks, @Changed18

Bit lost as married for over 45 years.

I was really posting to say that there are no guarantees. Having mega pension pots won't help if you're dead before they can be spent. We didn't bring our trip forward as my wife's health over the last 18 months didn't allow for it.

Also, I was posting that deferring your state pension doesn't really have any benefits I can see.

But hopefully someone will be able to prove me wrong.

Gosh I'm so sorry to hear that @billyt, no wonder you are feeling a bit lost. Sadly your situation illustrates the point about not deferring state pension very well indeed. And overall, trying to get the balance right between saving for the future and making the most of today.

@billyt so sorry to hear about your wife
My Dad died last year after being married to mum for over 55 years and it's a huge loss to us all.
I also work with a lady who had spent the last five or so years planning her slightly early retirement only for her husband to pass away less than a year after he retired. They had so many plans. It's heartbreaking.
It does bring home the need to have balance. We are both saving into company pensions and have separate savings. I hope we can get the mortgage paid off by the time we are 55 and then focus on saving as well as travelling whilst we're both still working. I think it's important to enjoy life in the here and now as well as planning for retirement

@billyt I’m so sorry for your loss. And for your darling wife who never got the retirement she deserved or the state pension she paid into all those years.

I keep banging on on these threads about retiring early if you can and how you can’t take it with you. Like you, I can see no benefit in deferring pensions. I took my occupational pension at 60, whilst I was still working, and paid the tax. I will have to live until 80 before I’ve made a loss on that and who knows how long I’ve got?

Do it now. It’s no rehearsal.

Spectre8 about your sun chasing - sounds great . Please tell me a bit about how you look into this - we cant do atm due to pt jobs - but when dh retires fully in 3 years time he would love to be away in winter as he gets really low in the months when it gets dark early. Thanks.

To be honest I haven't looked into it much but I know it's called wintering, I need to do more research and at first I thought I'd buy a holuday home but then realised it's probably better to rent as I can also go to different countries and cheaper ones. Plus not worrying about local taxes on owning home etc.

All I've thought is I'd love to do that, and how much would it cost and how I can do it as cheap as I can. If I could rent my house during those month it'd help with the costs so I don't have to worry so much.

I'm thinking I might use my 25% lump sum as the way to fund any difference.

I should go to the moneysavingexpert forums and check the retirement board usually really good source of information and can always start your own post to ask how to do it.

I also think I should look into house swaps so u go live in their home they live in yours

I'm 25yrs away from retiring but I was just taking a drop gap about my reitement plans and what I want that life to look at and how far off am I in achieving it. I have 25yrs to do something about it to make it happen so if I need to save more better to do so now

You can live abroad and collect the UK state pension https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/living-or-working-overseas-and-state-pension#toc-3

There are plenty of snowbirds at my dad's retirement condo complex in South Florida, and I intend to be one of them once I retire.

BiilyT and others re deferring your state pension. Whether it is a good idea to do so really depends on circumstances. But it is important to know it is an option. For me it has been a godsend.
In my late 50’s my now ex-H got us into huge financial difficulty. I then went thru a contentious divorce where he fought a reasonable financial settlement all the way. This cost me a lot of money. So I had to work ( in own business) til about 70, just to make up financially for the devastation. So I deferred my pension, meaning it is now considerably higher than average.
I have no DB or DC pension, no tax free lump sum.
Whether pension deferral is appropriate depends on personal circumstances, but it IS an option.