Retirement

[ilovemydog123]

I live in UK and I do worry about when I retire if I can afford it
Think I be working to be honest
I rent a 3 bedroom house was considering downsizing but not much difference in rent prices
Housing association property I live in
My pension ain't that great after paying in for 17 years to a well established work place
Anyone know what I could get with help money when that time comes ? Can I get help with rent ? Etc

Some questions:

How old are you now?
Have you got/do you expect to have the full state pension?
Is your job physical, do you expect to work until state retirement age (or within a couple of years of it)?
How many years until you retire?

If you go to www.entitledto.co.uk you can plug in your details (just up your age to retirement age) and you will see what benefits you should be entitled to.

I put some data in (assumed full state pension, rent of £800/month, private pension of £4k) and the benefit amount came out at £140/per week.

This gives you an income of £21680/year. After tax (no NI to pay) your monthly income would be £1655. Less your rent and council tax this is around £750/month for food & bills.

How does that look?

Was just coming on to recommend the 'entitled to' website.

Good luck n

It's also worth looking at your expenditure to see what if anything will stop when you stop work such as commute costs or work clothes.

If you don't already do it I highly recommend really getting to know where your money goes now. Little direct debits for this/that/the other. I'm a sucker for phone insurance. It's only £2.50/month per phone but I am sure I am still paying for phones which are long since gone.

I have read that the most expensive time of retirement is when you first retire. When you aren't used to filling your day. So what do you plan to do?

Could you start building yourself a cash pot now to be used to set yourself up with a hobby when you retire?

You may get some help with your rent from housing benefit once you turn state pension age. It will depend on a few things - the amount of your state pension, the amount of private pensions and any savings. If you have savings in excess of 16k you won't be able to claim housing benefit or council tax support. Likewise the calculation for pension credit will also look at these 3 things. The first 10k of savings is disregarded for the pension credit calculation.

If you have a full state pension but don't have a decent private pension you may be able to get pension credit and reduction of council tax.

Thank you I didn't know there was a website grateful for information

It was a good prompt for me to look at it!

Knowledge is power

@ilovemydog123 one thing people tend to forget is you do not pay NI contributions and pension contributions on your pension. This means the difference between gross and net pension is less than between gross and net pay.

For example a pension of £17,000 gives you a monthly gross pension of £1,417 and a net pay of £1,343.

Where as pay of £17,000 with 3% pension contribution is gross pay of £1,417 gives a net pay of £1,265. So £80 more a month.