Enjoying Retirement

[gotoPzero]

Carbon Sasquatch said:

gotoPzero said:

Its an old report.

I know we're in an inflationary period, but October 2021....

LOL, but you cant escape since the new year things have gone upwards rapidly.
Perhaps "out of date" is better.

[Carbon Sasquatch]

Makes me glad to be bald.

[GT3Manthey]

gotoPzero said:

Its an old report.

Now a basic gents hair cut in somewhere thats stabby is £10 ish.

I have mates who spend £20-£30 for a normal trim in town.
They get a "free" coffee and a hair cut from someone who looks like they should be in ZZTop though.

Meanwhile I go and see my man Omar, who is £9 plus £1 tip. I sit down, I shut up and I leave without getting anything for "free" other than his bad attitude.

I like the sound of your guy .

Can’t be bothered with the faff and a Turkish coffee !

Pleasant weekend everyone

[Jaguar steve]

Carbon Sasquatch said:

As has been said repeatedly - you need your own expenditure list

Absolutely.

There's no one size fits all range of categories that survey was based on, it'll depend on your own wants and needs and capabilities and willingness to save money by doing stuff yourself rather that forking out for somebody else to do it for you.

Some can live well on a budget and have sufficient cash left over for hobbies and holidays that others couldn't even contemplate surviving on.

Our baseline living costs for example including food and drink, all our utility bills and council tax as well as running three cars is a smudge over £900 a month - the rest of our income is ours to do whatever we like with.

[Carbon Sasquatch]

Jaguar steve said:

Our baseline living costs for example including food and drink, all our utility bills and council tax as well as running three cars is a smudge over £900 a month - the rest of our income is ours to do whatever we like with.

Wow - I'm comfortably double that.... but I guess it depends on what it really covers.

400 for all house related bills - then I'd struggle to spend under 500 on supermarket shopping. Then the car insurance, tax, maintenance & fuel, a few bits of eating out, phones etc & I'm around 2k.

Sounds like I need to have a word with myself (and my wife )

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Carbon Sasquatch said:

then I'd struggle to spend under 500 on supermarket shopping.

For two adults! Are you shopping in Wholefood Supermarket? I've still got my youngest son at home, and we spend £400 for 3 adults. But we could cut that back by half if we had to.

[Carbon Sasquatch]

I can't remember the last time I spent under £100 for a weekly supermarket shop - right - I have a target

[James6112]

Trimming the outgoings, in advance of retirement
Cancelled Sky & similar frivolity..

All direct debits £500 a month (ok, £750 when the energy fixed rate ends June 2023!)
Food/fuel etc £500
So £1000 a month at the moment for the essentials

Pretty good

Will easily get £3k a month until I die (index linked)

[Jaguar steve]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

For two adults! Are you shopping in Wholefood Supermarket? I've still got my youngest son at home, and we spend £400 for 3 adults. But we could cut that back by half if we had to.

Our spend is usually around £300 a month for two and that includes several bottles of wine and beer. We could cut down too but that's around our value/quality sweet spot and includes lots of fish and seafood but not a great deal of meat or processed food.

We usually cook from scratch which saves quite a bit over ready meals and very rarely have takeaways as they tend to make both of us feel a bit crap.

[mikeiow]

GT3Manthey said:

gotoPzero said:

Its an old report.

Now a basic gents hair cut in somewhere thats stabby is £10 ish.

I have mates who spend £20-£30 for a normal trim in town.
They get a "free" coffee and a hair cut from someone who looks like they should be in ZZTop though.

Meanwhile I go and see my man Omar, who is £9 plus £1 tip. I sit down, I shut up and I leave without getting anything for "free" other than his bad attitude.

I like the sound of your guy .

Can’t be bothered with the faff and a Turkish coffee !

Pleasant weekend everyone

I guess when MrsMikeIOW leaves me I might have to start paying for cuts again - it's been a few years....decades.....
As Carbon Sasquatch said: you need your own Number - just like figuring out your own personal inflation rate.

Enjoy the weekend!!

[ARHarh]

Carbon Sasquatch said:

Jaguar steve said:

Our baseline living costs for example including food and drink, all our utility bills and council tax as well as running three cars is a smudge over £900 a month - the rest of our income is ours to do whatever we like with.

Wow - I'm comfortably double that.... but I guess it depends on what it really covers.

400 for all house related bills - then I'd struggle to spend under 500 on supermarket shopping. Then the car insurance, tax, maintenance & fuel, a few bits of eating out, phones etc & I'm around 2k.

Sounds like I need to have a word with myself (and my wife )

We easily run all household bills on £700. This includes all food and cleaning supplies, all bills insurance etc. Any repairs and maintenance. We don't even try to achieve that it just happens, we don't have mains gas so could probably do it for a lot less if we didn't need to buy LPG. This has gone up from £600 11 years ago when we moved here. This all runs a for bed house, with 2 adults both at home most of the time.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Jaguar steve said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

For two adults! Are you shopping in Wholefood Supermarket? I've still got my youngest son at home, and we spend £400 for 3 adults. But we could cut that back by half if we had to.

Our spend is usually around £300 a month for two and that includes several bottles of wine and beer.

We don't buy alcohol, which helps. But that's offset with occasional trips to Waitrose and M&S food hall. My wife is a demon with the coupons though, we usually get at least 10% off.

[272BHP]

There are things I couldn't do without though which is where my costs load up. Gym membership, Sky, BT Sports and other subscriptions, DAZN, Prime.

Also I would miss it if I didn't go see my beloved Tottenham a few times a season.

The more I think about it the more an expensive prospect retirement seems to be.

[Sheepshanks]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Jaguar steve said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

For two adults! Are you shopping in Wholefood Supermarket? I've still got my youngest son at home, and we spend £400 for 3 adults. But we could cut that back by half if we had to.

Our spend is usually around £300 a month for two and that includes several bottles of wine and beer.

We don't buy alcohol, which helps. But that's offset with occasional trips to Waitrose and M&S food hall. My wife is a demon with the coupons though, we usually get at least 10% off.

This always causes my wife to get angsy but she reckons food only for two of us, with a bit added on for the odd meal for grandchildren, is typically £125 wk. We don’t buy alcohol either.

I have to say I can’t recall seeing a supermarket debit on the statements that low for some years. And around once a month we go to Costco where a 150 quid disappears in the twinkling of an eye.

[mikeiow]

272BHP said:

There are things I couldn't do without though which is where my costs load up. Gym membership, Sky, BT Sports and other subscriptions, DAZN, Prime.

Also I would miss it if I didn't go see my beloved Tottenham a few times a season.

The more I think about it the more an expensive prospect retirement seems to be.

That is okay!
No point retiring and doing FEWER of the things you enjoy!

Just accept the need to work longer: none of this is a race, & this thread is just about "Enjoying Retirement" - when you do decide to jack things in, just be sure your "Number" is matched by your ability to fund it, one way or another.

[Another project car]

mikeiow said:

272BHP said:

There are things I couldn't do without though which is where my costs load up. Gym membership, Sky, BT Sports and other subscriptions, DAZN, Prime.

Also I would miss it if I didn't go see my beloved Tottenham a few times a season.

The more I think about it the more an expensive prospect retirement seems to be.

That is okay!
No point retiring and doing FEWER of the things you enjoy!

Just accept the need to work longer: none of this is a race, & this thread is just about "Enjoying Retirement" - when you do decide to jack things in, just be sure your "Number" is matched by your ability to fund it, one way or another.

100% I wouldn't want to retire with just enough to exist and not enjoy the rest of my life. That would be more miserable than going to work

[CAH706]

For 2 adults and one growing 13 year old

We spend around £100/ week on our main weekly shopping but there are also school lunches and ad hoc purchases. I’d guess around £150/week for food and household cleaning stuff with a small amount of alcohol

I cook all main meals from scratch and we use some branded and some unbranded stuff. Not sure we could do this much cheaper without compromising on things (which fortunately I don’t need to do ….yet)

Council tax is £200/month, Gas and Electricity £160 and water £60. Insurance is not much at £25

So I’d guess for this we are at close on £900/month

Additionally, we have Sky, Netflix etc etc plus 3 phone contracts and run 3 cars. This is where I could make savings if I needed to but to be honest I’d have carried on working if I had to trade back on things like this.

[Drumroll]

Another project car said:

100% I wouldn't want to retire with just enough to exist and not enjoy the rest of my life. That would be more miserable than going to work

But this what the thread, one person having enough to 'exist' is another person's living their dream money.

I suppose a lot of it must be down how much material stuff some people need to be happy.

[Jaguar steve]

Drumroll said:

But this what the thread, one person having enough to 'exist' is another person's living their dream money.

I suppose a lot of it must be down how much material stuff some people need to be happy.

It's not all about stuff though.

Anybody's standard of living depends not only on how much money they have but a lot depends on how anybody uses money too and in many cases you can substitute spending money by putting some effort in instead.

We have a cottage style garden rammed with plants and shrubs. If we'd bought the lot from a garden centre the bill would easily be north of five grand by now, but it's probably a single figure percentage of that because we've taken cuttings, harvested and sewn seeds, divided plants and swapped with friends and neighbours and rather than paying a gardener £15 or £20 an hour we've put the effort in ourselves.

Same with much else besides when you're retired - you don't always have to throw money at whatever you want, you can throw time at it instead

[OldSkoolRS]

I suppose it depends on whether you get pleasure from doing things like gardening or other jobs...I get a feeling of satisfaction if I pull something apart that doesn't work and fix it, or clean up something that's a bit scruffy and make it look nice again rather than just buying another one. It's like 'The repair shop' in our house at times and having the time starting next week, I'll no doubt be doing plenty of jobs along those lines.

We also tried cuttings from our old Lilac tree before we had it cut down (I built a garden studio where it stood for my wife), though I didn't manage to get any to take. I have managed to fill gaps in our front garden with self seeded Lavendar that I've potted on and the replanted once they were established. It wasn't that I couldn't afford to go and buy more fully grown plants, but it just gave me pleasure to do it.