Retirement Advice

Hi, we live in East Yorkshire, we have no mortgage on our 4 bedroomed detached house and run 1 paid for car, which is 2 years old so at present covered by warranty. Our Direct debits amount to around £500 per month, we spend around £600 per month on food and drink and food for 3 dogs and around £150 on fuel. Our income is £2600 per month, without adding on interest from savings, and we manage extremely well. We don't eat out much because we are both good cooks and find that unless we pay a huge amount ordinary "pub grub" and many restaurants are not as good as we have at home but we do enjoy a night at the pub - quiz nights etc a couple of times a week and a chinese takeaway once or twice a week. Regarding holidays, we have a motorhome because we like to take the dogs with us and enjoy walking etc, and mostly this expense comes out of our monthly budget even though we do eat out all the time on holiday. We do our best to spend our monthly budget and usually manage it as we both have hobbies which cost money. We have savings so are not concerned about saving now, we have saved all of our lives and now is the time to spend it.

I think some of the snipers are those with loadsamoney themselves. The mean income in the U.K. is something like 25k and that’s for an employed individual. Obviously there are the super rich and poor but that’s just the mean- With no mortgage I would think 30k could be described as comfortable - certainly not lavish. The Higher rate of tax kicks in at around 50k for one person now , so 30k isn’t wealthy for 2 people by a long shot . ( yes I know it’s all relative before I get shot down) Some areas you certainly need 2 cars but obviously the OP can play it by ear when she and her OH are here. Welcome back!

Depends on where you are going to settle.

If youre both retired would you really need 2 cars?

Wow. 30 thousand. How the other half live

I think once the house and cars are purchased your find a vast difference in everyday outgoings like shopping outlets etc. Your be able to budget where you happiest and like most of us turn a blind eye to the naughty but nice treats. How exciting I wish you well.

Regarding the cars I'd be inclined to go for a family sized car for when you go out together and for holidays to have space for luggage, then get a much smaller second car which will cost less for tax and insurance etc - a little runaround for your local journeys.
£30,000 sounds like enough for a comfortable retirement. I shall have less than half that as a pension but then there's only me so a bit less outgoings. I live on a similar amount now while still working but plan to retire in about a year and will downsize to a cheaper area thus clearing the mortgage and giving me money in the bank for holidays and treats. I try not to think about the cost of care as that might be where I come unstuck, but when I release the equity I want to help out DD and DS with some of it - then I just need to remain fit and healthy for at least 7 years so it can't be reclaimed! Good luck with your move and enjoy your retirement. I intend to enjoy mine.

As you will be starting afresh have a look at cash back sites e.g. Top cash back or quidco. The cash back on car insurance and home ins can be quite useful. This is also available on shopping for furnishings etc.
I wish you a lovely retirement let others snipe you know you have done well enjoy it ??

No,i don't care if I'm unpopular for saying this,but i think that a lot of you on here are bragging a bit,to a certain extent,and theres probably a lot of retired folk on gransnet who can't afford heating in winter,let alone to buy a house,& run 2 cars( not good for environment either) and not sure which yorkshire area youve chosen,perhaps somewhere more 'high brow' like harrogate,or york itself? But the 'inner city' residents wont like the sound of anything that whiffs of 'posh' or 'bragging' so i hope youve got well off neighbours!(told to you straight by a 'yorkshire lass'!) I dont always agree with some of gabriellas remarks,but this time there may be a bit of truth in it,( no need to call her a 'nasty piece of work' or that makes you one also?) and i dont think you needed the advice deep down,theres others could have given you that when you got the house,made plans,etc. Same goes for any of you on here who've just bragged all you'll have for a 'cosy' retirement.& if you dont like the advice don't ask for it,specially from a yorkshire born lass! And no not jealous,( im not even old enough to retire yet!) just,as others have said,you're not being very mindful of some on lower pensions or even just state pensions.

Each car will cost @£6kpa to run; holidays @£12k; utilities; + food + council tax; household maintenance; clothes; entertainment et al, imo you’ll need £50k pa. what happens when your lump sum runs out? You could both live until you are 100yo + good luck with your planned moved to Yorkshire; it’s a beautiful county

And i agree with maggiemaybe,that karma comment was a very nasty and unnecessary thing to say! You asked,we all told you what we think,if you didnt want the both sides you shouldnt have asked.so no,neither maggieM nor gabrielaG were being a nasty piece of work,but i think your own nasty bad karma comment was! What a horrible thing to say to folk just because they dislike you 'bragging' all you've got to 'enjoy'on here? You may find karma works for that too! im off to find a genuinely nice person who needs proper advice on another forum( as im ussually quite kind& helpful on gransnet)

Theres also some as dislike youve lived away for years,so no help to uk tax 'coffers' but returning to a (relatively) tax enabled/free retirement?

It depends on how you live! We aren’t retired and are living off a lot less than that (after tax). I never feel I’m in need of anything and we have holidays etc., but we have a mortgage now and live a simple life by most people’s standards apparently....if you like buying stuff and are quite materialistic , the sky is the limit with how much you’ll spend. Decide how you want to live and what you want to do and work from there. But personally, I think it’s surprising how little you need for a good life....people just easily fall into the materialism trap it seems.

Should have said we don’t have a mortgage now!

Chocolatenoodle8, your comment widened my eyes. My car (we share) doesn’t cost anything close to £6000 a year to run. It’s paid for (from my lump sum when I retired). We do a low mileage, as many do when retired. So far it cost the total of one annual service, MOT (it’s 5 this year), tax and a below average amount of fuel. About £1000 tops! We are fortunate, comfortable on two occupational pensions and one state pension (I’m currently being stiffed on that by the Government as a WASPI woman). £50,000 per year is a excessive figure to quote to simply be comfortable.

Plumcushion, I was with you until you started throwing wishes for ill fortune and calling another gransnetter a ‘nasty piece of work’. There is simply no need for that and it says more about you (quickly triggered to become offensive) than the other posters here!

We have access to £30,000 per annum which we thought we would "need" following two busy working lives where we could spend that amount without really thinking why or how we did it but now we spend much less and still manage to "spoil" ourselves and close family.

It sounds like you worked hard and planned well. Have fun?

I think you would be very comfortable on that amount but it does depend on the area you are living

Generally that amount would do fine. But, and only you will know the level of lifestyle you expect. If you are expecting to be eating out every second day, shopping at Waitrose and high end department stores then your amount won't be enough. Don't know how your car insurance, health costs will work out having lived out of the UK for so long. Used to be a block if you lived out of EU for more than 5 years. Good Luck, Yorkshire is beautiful.

Gabrielle
I dont think the Op Meant it like that at all.
Its a sort of thing I could ask she has been away for a long time.
Its making me think about when I finally retire .Not till 67.
How much I might need.
Some posters are saying that it wouldnt be enough.If your a keen traveller and take cruises.
It might not be 30 000 seems a lot but it depends on how its used a thousand goes like that nowadays.
Please dont overthink it.

Plumcushion
Slow to anger...please be more tactful

I agree with Stella14 £6K seems excessive for running a car. If mine cost that to run I'd have had to give it up long ago which would have been a nightmare as I wouldn't be able to get to work as the local bus service has been cut back so much. Taxis to work - the only alternative to an hour's walk each way - would cost at least £2K a year and then I'd struggle to get anywhere else! I've lived on less than £13K a year since my divorce, still paying a mortgage, so the car would have taken nearly half my earnings at that rate.
Of course if you buy a very expensive new car and count depreciation I guess it comes to quite a lot, but my car is old and had already experienced most of its depreciation when I bought it 3 years ago! The model of car you drive determines the cost of tax and insurance so bear that in mind when you choose.

Yes, Jocork, like you I wasn’t taking depreciation into account. Do we need to unless we plan to have a new car every few years?

You might want to consider the basic needs. I have two pensions, private and state giving a monthly income of £600 and 800. The latter goes into an account where all the DD's come from and they are just slightly less except when there is no Council Tax or house insurance in the month. I also get DLA and state pension into another account which helps towards the £20 and hour I pay for care twice a week. It all gets spent. I have no car, or mobile telephone. The last holiday I had was about 20 years ago, mostly because it is very costly to be taken on holiday by taxi because I cannot use public transport. I do not go out shopping locally because the pavements are too narrow for my wheelchair, which costs as much as a car and also occasionally needs repairs. A new battery for it cost me £450 two years ago. I have an interest only mortgage which costs £161 a month and it is up in 2 years so I have to sell.

There are repairs to save for. I have no savings because my late husband needed care and when he was in hospital the cost of visits was around £100 a day by taxi because I had to be wheeled to the ward and collected and the hospital was 10 miles away.

I am not bewailing my life. Far from it. I consider I am lucky. Some pensioners have to apply for social benefits because all they have is the State Pension.

You have to budget for every eventuality. I was 46 when I was disabled by GBS by viral infection. One morning I got up to go to work and my legs gave way and that was the start of a very long crawl back to health which is still going on at 78.

£30,000 a year would be lovely, but I do not go without food. I have problems with repairs and there are charities connected to the pension provider which have paid for the most serious.

Prices are shooting up in the north while they stagnate a bit in the south so dont count on getting a bargain, especially in Yorkshire which has a huge amount of influx from elsewhere right now.

Weather has been more extreme here in recent years, especially up north with some veru cold winters. A picture perfect cottage may be a huge money drain and cost £££ to heat so consider that.

£30k is certainly "livable". You wont be flush. You also wont be on the breadline. You WILL have to watch your spending but you wont be without food IYKWIM