Is living on the state pension really that bad?

[cateringday]

I mean, if you own your home then you’re getting around £250 a week just for bills and spends.
i have a tiny pension and DH has none. I am always worrying about this but then realised that we will have no rent or mortgage to pay.
im just wondering if it would be as awful as people make out? I hear stuff saying you need £300000 in pension pot to have a comfortable retirement, why would you need that much?

It will be a long process probably over a decade away but it will happen. People will be given warning. They will factor this into their job suitability, family planning and location. We will move away from being state reliant to self reliant. It has worked before.

As a single woman, divorced, I most certainly could not live a reasonable life if I just had my state pension.

I own my house, mortgage free, but even having no rent or mortgage other bills would swallow up every penny of my state pension. I certainly couldn't afford to run a car, nor have my pet dog.

I could possibly subsist at some very low level, thankfully, I've never had to do so, but it would be a pretty miserable existence; I'd definitely be having to make a choice between heating and eating, as many pensioners do.

@TinkerTailorLadyThinker
So currently
mortgage £950
CT -£170
Gas/ electric £125
Water £60
internet £17
phones £30 ( x2 £15 pm)
car insurance £45
house insurance £20
streaming £20
Life insurance £29

£1466 with the Mortgage

Food
£80 a week as a family of 5 but even if that stayed the same for two of us say £350

so yes slightly over £800 admittedly

on top of that at present we then have savings, holidays etc but we also have x2 reasonable wages and support 5 of us which would be different in retirement.

I agree as a single person it would be tight but as a couple it SP only would be do-able for us and not be on the breadline. That said i’m 30+ years off retirement so everything will of changed by then. I also have a workplace pension so circumstances will be different anyway

Well, what do you currently spend on top of your housing costs?

But there are many others that don’t have the benefit of family. They don’t own their own home & are in private rents. Just because you don’t know any who are struggling doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They would probably would not say even if they were struggling.

People retiring now would have to live to 97 to get three decades of state pension. Even older women who got theirs at 60 would have to live to 90.

Average life expectancy is around 83.

Health wise I’d guess it’s an expensive time of life, that’s where a lot of my mum’s pension goes on. Also home repairs and bills.

If you're in a couple and get 2 lots of full state pension i.e. £25k tax-free, I'm sure that's perfectly do-able if you have no mortgage or rent.

But if you're single, or your partner dies or you get divorced and then have to live on £12.5k, that would be tricky long-term.

My parents live off their state pensions. They are pretty simple in terms of needs - my dad is disabled and rarely leaves the house / has no hobbies and my mum goes for walks and attends church a few times a week. They have a house brought and paid for and seem ok. For them it works. For me, heck no. I am building pension pots to retire on as close to my working salary as possible. I’ve worked and no doubt will work damn hard. I want to have a somewhat extravagant retirement when I get there for however long I have left.

I think it would be incredibly hard to live on just the state pension alone. But if you factor in other circumstances, then the outlook can be so different. If you rent and are on pension credit then your rent and council tax will be paid, and you'll get free dentistry and eyecare.

We own our own house mortgage free, retired at 57 and 61 respectively and have been retired about twelve years so far. We have a nice life thanks to sensible financial planning, workplace pensions and investments. All these things give you choices. My jobs haven't been high-flying but I had a defined benefit pension attached to all three of them. We don't go on expensive holidays, just not interested as we have been pretty much everywhere we wanted to go. We run a small car (recently bought a new one) but mainly use our bus passes to get to the nearest city where my husband volunteers. We use the library there too, which is great. I would definitely say our largest bill is our council tax - we split all bills between us, always have done.

I would definitely have sleepless nights if we didn't have good savings to cover repairs to our house. We moved about seven years ago and have already spent about £15k on repairs and improvements - mainly upgrading the heating, new patio doors, a new shed roof, new shower and a couple of other plumbing and electrical jobs There's always something that needs doing regularly - for example stuff like getting the gutters cleaned.

I couldn't get an NHS dentist so pay monthly privately and also have a very expensive prescription for my glasses due to an eyesight problem. We help our children and grandchildren financially,which gives us great pleasure. We eat out and have the odd takeaway. My husband spends on his hobby and I spend on my garden and clothes, and also days out with my daughter and the grandchildren.

I think life on a single pension would be very hard and you wouldn't have much in the way of choices and autonomy. Obviously our lives will not be so comfortable if one of us is on our own, although the surviving spouse will get half of the other's workplace pensions. However we still both are able to save money from our monthly income. Having said that, not sure where the tax system is going - both of us have been hit by extra tax recently. At the moment they're taking a huge chunk of extra tax from one of my work pensions, and despite being usually pretty financially literate, I'm struggling to understand the Inland Revenue's explanation and figures here. Oh well.............

You're not factoring in people who can't work whether they're jobseeker or not, including the old, long term sick and disabled (not all of whom qualifies for disability benefits). No amount of family planning, choosing where to live, career choices etc is going to make someone living on approx £400 (basic UC for jobseeker) or £800-1000 (UC with sickness element/state pension) per month able to pay rent of £1000+ per month with life's other expenses on top. If someone can't work they have no choices. It's benefits or die. I guess you must be one of these people who thinks all benefits claimants are scroungers. It only worked before because we had workhouses.

I am talking about 18 to 55 year olds without a severe disability. There are alot of them and they are in a position to be accountable.

I could possibly subsist at some very low level, thankfully, I've never had to do

Well that's the thing. I had a spell as a single parent with 2 small DC (left ex due to DV). I couldnt work because childcare would have eaten up my wages and there was no free hours like there are now. There was very little help at all so it wasn't really possible until they started school. Anything you did earn was taken off your benefits anyway, other than I think around £15. So there was no point.This was in the early 90s.

A single parent on benefits alone gets less than a single pensioner. That was the case then, its still the case now. We didnt have a luxurious life which is why I worked as soon as I could. But we did manage. We had food, I paid my bills. It was really things like christmas/birthdays that were tough and I used to set aside a little each week for that. But no we didnt have holidays and days out were free/cheap things. We weren't unhappy though. Not at all. I didnt spend all my time worrying about money because what would have been the point! I cut my cloth and focused on the positives. So I know I can do it.

I think people equate frugal with misery. Even the word frugal sounds miserable! But for me personally there's come a point where I do just see a lot of things as a waste of money. I enjoy simple pleasures now. Not because I've been forced into it, it's just happened naturally. I'm still excited for retirement. More time to spend in my garden, I might join U3A, lots more time for crafting. None of those things are expensive. The real joy for me will come from my time being my own.

But after 9.30am here. By the time you get more than two buses it’s time to come home! Unless staying local!
I often go on bus journeys with my DF, he loves it. Likes to sit on the top deck like a child and watch the world go by, it’s the little things.

It's hardly screw the poor to give them a grand each month from public funds is it?

I think it depends on what you want tp do in retirement. If you want to bumble about leading a quiet low key life, the SP is enough (assuming you own your own home and have some savings for any repairs needed)
But if you want to travel, see the world have a flamboyant social life etc then you will definitely struggle

But yeah you can survive

Spending, I think, is rather age dependent, in his 70’s df was out and about, theatre, restaurants etc.
By 90 he rarely left his flat and his biggest expense was heating, a constant 24c or hotter when he was airing his clothes because otherwise he might catch a chill.

Free bus travel enables pensioners to visit places. The money they save on travel they can spend at their destination e.g lunch. Supporting local businesses. Similarly young oerson railcard does the same.

How is housing benefit of any benefit to any village or town. It just benefits the person claiming it who is not taking responsibility for their individual situation.

Which means that if you have a small private pension, a modest home that you own outright and pay council tax you really aren’t much better off than someone living on state pension + pension credit, particularly if you’re on the old state pension.

I agree with you - at present there seems little incentive for some people to be self reliant and actually work, particularly when working people are taxed so heavily. I recently looked at my personal breakdown of where the tax is spent, and the highest amount of all goes on welfare (and this excluded state pension payments which were listed separately from the general welfare amount).

Of course disabled people need society's support, no question. But there needs to be much more done in educating people about finances and the world of work.

Work gives you so much apart from money - self-esteem, friendship and motivation. Yes it's tough - those years juggling with childcare is hard - but this has improved since my day.

Everyone should be expected to make a contribution to society unless there are extremely pressing reasons why they shouldn't. In one particular area where I used to work, there were generations of the same family who had never worked, I can't see how this can be remotely sustainable in terms of the economy. Working people and all taxpayers are surely getting fed up with the way it's skewed against them. I don't think this Government is helping here. Reform is definitely needed but not in the way they're doing it.

Before state pension family often had to take their elderly parents in.
I’d sooner help fund pensioners through my taxes than live with family, parents or dc.

My DF doesn’t spend any money on the places we visit, I have to buy him the cup of tea. He normally takes a flask!

Depends on your lifestyle - I dont want to be watching the pennies in my retirement. We will have our private pensions, the state pension (if we still have it) and be mortgage free. 45 years (possibly more) of hard work, I want it to be fun!

I would rather keep working part-time than try and live on just the state pension. I imagine alot have a very simple life and that will suit some people (see comment abit further up). Im sure you can still have a very happy life seeing friends and family, hobbies that are not expensive etc. However, I love holidays and travel and im not going to do that on the state pension.

There’s the Trinity Study which looked at living off 4% of your pension pot.

So Your Annual spending × 25 = your needed pension pot or worked the other way,
pension pot × 4% = your Annual income, it would equal the same either way.

If your pot was
£500,000 × 4% = £20,000 per year (£20,000x 25 =500,000) . I know that’s alot of maths!

it’s worth looking at your spending and tracking it. I think you can check how much pension you would be entitled to as well and at what age

I think that if you want to travel and have a flamboyant social life, you should be making your own arrangements and not relying on state handouts to do it!