I’m still occasionally asked what my FIRE number is and while I did have a number in mind when I started my journey, I realised that over time, it was not so simple as it really depended on what kind of life I was going to live and enjoy post-work, so the goal had become a moving, fluctuating target.
Sometimes, I get in my head that I will travel and visit some of (not all of, since I’m not aiming for Fat FIRE!) the places around the world I’ve always fancied visiting. The FIRE number goes massively up.
Other times (and more often of late), I think about just enjoying my home comforts, pottering around the garden, learning new stuff, new not-too-expensive hobbies, improving my knowledge on things I already (think I) know such as investing and committing to some regular volunteering. The FIRE number goes a bit lower.
I think it will likely be something in between the above.
For many years, I had loosely based my future required income on a ‘Moderate’ standard of living as cited by Retirement Living Standards (RLS), namely an income for a single person of £23.3k, rounded up in my spreadsheets to £24k per year/£2k a month.
However, as I mentioned last year, the RLS adjusted their numbers, accounting for higher cost of living and I was rather shocked.
Source: retirementlivingstandards.org.uk
A jump from £23k to £31k! At the time, my hopes were quite dented, adjusting the required income to £31k, my spreadsheets would need to be extended by a few more rows and columns and I would need to work out how much i) more I needed to save, ii) more my investments needed to grow by, and iii) longer I needed to work.
For me, I mean, I’m not sure what I would spend £31k on, if I had it? I’d have to be frivolous and wasteful.
Those were my words, so I resolved to show how wrong RLS could be by tracking my own spending for 2024. My own guess on my spending? Being generous, £29k max.
Tracking
The last time I was logging my spending to the nearest penny/pound, I had been up to my eyeballs in credit card debt and trying to desperately clear it, so this was not an exercise I particularly enjoyed doing due to some not-so-great memories. However, it was something I felt I needed to do and which I had put off for far too long.
By month 4 of tracking, I saw with growing dread how wrong I was – not on my usual household monthly household spending, which I already knew was around £1.5k a month but so wrong on everything else.
My costs of living have gone up but not just the essentials – what I spent living my life appear to have spiralled, lifestyle inflation doing its thing.
My social life is nowhere as active as it used to be but when I do go out, I seem to spend quite a lot.
I did not think I had so many lunches out.
I spend a lot on birthday presents for friends and family. I have a big family.
I spend a lot more when I’m on holiday than I thought I did.
By the end of the year, my disbelieving eyes saw that the total I spent was £33,157.71.
How did that happen? I was shocked and dismayed that if I take off the £1.7k unexpected car repairs I paid earlier in the year (covered by my emergency fund), my spending comes out as pretty much the £31k cited by RLS. Damn you for being right <shakes fist>!
I have, it appears, been in my own words, ‘frivolous and wasteful’. Except I haven’t been, I’ve just been living my life.
To get a more accurate picture of my spending, I should track another year but I can’t face doing this exercise again, no matter how useful it will be. Mentally, I was really struggling by month 8, my thoughts often in a cloud, drawn back to the dark days of tracking my spending and extreme budgeting as I tried to pay down my debts.
Anyway, the fluffy wool has been pulled away from my eyes and I know that £24k income is not enough for my lifestyle.
What to do, what to do?
One good bit of news to come out of tracking my spending was that I still really don’t spend much on myself and I don’t feel like I am doing without.
So do I rein in my spending on the other stuff?
But I like the life I’m living so I’m not sure that I want to change too much, although I will be having discussions with my friends on more budget-friendly places for our outings and lunches. We used to be quite good at looking for places with discounts and special offers so I will start with those suggestions again I think.
I can’t see me stopping my trips to London to watch sporting events like Wimbledon and the NFL – tickets are not guaranteed for these events so if I can grab them, I will, (though not at any ridiculous cost).
So I’ve resigned to adjusting my spreadsheets to account for £31k retirement income and begin mulling over how my FF can provide such income for my post-work life.
I’m planning to look at decumulation again at some point, I touched upon it briefly four years ago but need to figure out more detail so I can plan more realistically.
Let’s hope I can articulate my thoughts into something which makes sense – it already hurts my brain just contemplating it!
Anybody else find out recently that their spending has spiralled and caught them unawares? Have you had to adjust your FIRE plans?
Can you break the 33k down by category?
Hi Jim
Not easily unfortunately – all I know is that around £18k of that was my ‘basic essentials’ spending, the majority of which are my mortgage payments (and overpayments).
The rest was in a big, uncategorised list and I don’t have the appetite to analyse and sort them into different categories of spending.
I guess I will at some point but as I didn’t particularly enjoy doing the tracking, I really don’t want to look at the spreadsheet again for a while.
I dont track it in detail like you. My bank allows me to download a spreadsheet of all transactions in a year, so i did that at the end of last year. I subtracted child care and mortgage (neither of which i will have when i retire). I also subtract new car purchases, big house improvement projects etc. I then add on an assumption of 1% of house value per year for average household upgrade / maintenance and an average amount on car assuming i upgrade my car every 5 years. Thats how i work out my number. I update it every few years. Consider taking the mortgage payments out (assuming it will be paid off when you retire) and adding in 1% of house value for maintenance instead.
I’ve not been on your site for a while and disappointed to see just how many ads you’ve got plastered on it now – almost completely unusable.
Such a shame.
I won’t be back unfortunately
Hi James
I don’t actively put in any ads so I guess what you’re seeing is just Google ads doing its thing.
It’s not as if I make much from it, £60 a year, which doesn’t even cover a third of my site running costs.
If this is a problem for most readers, perhaps I’ll consider removing my blog from the programme after I get my next annual payment.
First time anyone’s ever said anything, but thanks for stopping by.
Duck Duck Go is your friend here. It’s a browser that blocks ads. I use it for sites that have intrusive ads. Sorry Weenie!
Hah, no need to apologise, ChromeBaby – I use ad blockers myself!
Use Duck Duck Go on my personal lap top.
Hi weenie. Thanks for the post. That’s interesting that you spend more than you think. I think when it comes to that research about what’s considered a comfortable retirement – it of course has limitations in that what’s comfortable for one versus another is very different and of course, the things it tracks and includes does not apply for all so it has to be personal I think for sure and as you know you are spending that and it feels needed to make you comfortable then it’s right.
I have tracked money to the penny for 10 years now so know if I am happy living off £24k a year now then I should be later on. My amount has been dynamic though as I used to naively set it at £12k a year but I spend far more now on big expenses per year. I aim to find out over the next 10 years what my comfortable amount truly is and if it remains at £24k then that’s a comfortable retirement for me. I have moved from a specific figure to say that FI for me is simply giving me the same money I spend now that makes me happy. If this moves slightly then I will adjust and perhaps need to work a little longer.
TFJ
TFJ
Cheers TFJ.
It’s great to read that you are happy living off £24k a year – if only that had been my outcome, lol! Also great that you have the next 10 years to work out pretty accurately if your spending will stay around the same so plenty of time to adjust.
When I first started reading this and reached the RLS bit, I was thinking, “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. £31k is way over the top.“. And then I read on…oh, dear, maybe you do have to worry about it. Hmm. 🙂
Not sure what to say really, other than best of luck with the saving/investing. It does sound (by your description) like you are fairly barebones …no lifestyle creep down the years since you paid off the spendthrift debt?
How much longer do you think you’ll need to get to a point where your pensions (work DB & DC, SIPPs), ISAs and GIAs will provide £31k of income? Plus you’ll likely wish to keep an additional amount for whatever you need for big-ticket items e.g. new roof, new Lamborghini? (I assume your £33k expenditure doesn’t include any notional amounts you set aside annually go towards such items).
Anyhow, look forward to hearing in due course about how you decide to handle this situation.
Hi Curlew
Spending on myself hasn’t crept up, as I no longer buy things to own anymore – what’s crept up is more social and also accounts for my annual trip to Asia and family stuff/events.
I will have to cite my ever-moving goalposts of between 2-3 years to go. And yes, my annual expenditure will likely include putting money aside for big ticket spending (not to be mistaken for my emergency fund, which also needs to be topped up…)
Thanks for this. I used to think we, as a couple, could live reasonably on £24k – we don’t have a mortgage, and live fairly frugally in rural Yorkshire. I started tracking our expenditure last financial year, and it came out at £34k, with this year on course to be the same. This excludes capital expenditure – notably a small extension, and car replacement. Life certainly seems significantly more expensive now than a few years ago, especially any form of going out!
Hi Martin
Thanks for reading and sharing your experience. My mortgage (and overpayments) account for a third of my annual expenses, I haven’t considered what my spending will be when I’m mortgage-free (or when my mortgage is close to being paid off) so perhaps the £33k is the top end and more likely expenditure will be something a little lower, though not too low as things continue to get more expensive!
Its a bit unfortunate that you associate expense tracking with the painful experience of working your way out of debt. So doing one, triggers thoughts and feelings of the other. I’d think about whether sticking at it may eventually break the link, continued exposure eventually lessening the negative side effects, would be a form of CBT essentially – its difficult to get away from expense tracking being pretty critical to any personal finance system. If you don’t know where its going, you’re sort of in the dark
One thing I would add is you can often see big differences year on year in spending, so could be this year was just a large one, that said, there is nothing to say that the level of expenditure is a problem, if you are spending intentionally and can perceive the value, then you’re probably getting it right.
If you did want to persevere with the tracking, then I’d use Moneyhub, it makes the whole business super quick and easy, having used it for a year or so, you’d have to prise it out of my cold, dead hands now, it makes life so much easier..
Hi Rhino
I think time has lessened the negative effects but it’s taken me many years still to get to a point where I thought I could actually do the tracking exercise. When I started doing it, I thought I was fine with it but as the weeks and months went by, I realised I wasn’t. The closest thing I can think of is how certain songs trigger certain memories and emotions, it’s a bit like that.
I think 2024 was particularly ‘spendy’ so not every year is going to be the same. I think I might just take a high level look at my statements to keep general tabs on my spending as opposed to item per item.
I’ve considered apps/websites like Moneyhub but it’s not something I would use.
I tend to track at the macro level. I know what my annual income is – and I know how much I’ve saved each year – so first minus the second gives my actual spend. If I have a high spending month, I tend to flex it down the following month.
Spending will flex over time. You’ll probably find yourself wanting to travel less in your 70s than now, for example. You won’t have work related costs like commuting once you retire either. You’ll be able to take advantage of older person discounts eg free bus travel, railcards etc. You can also make it flex if you have to – eg by figuring out what’s discretionary, and what’s not. You might also be able flex your income too eg by selling off stuff you don’t need, or airbnb your home while travelling.
Hi G
Somewhere along the way, there’s been a disconnect, as I think was far more aware of my spending compared to my saving early on in my journey!
Very true about the travelling less as you get older – I wanted to travel much more when I was younger but couldn’t afford it and can see me wanting to travel even less in my 70s and that was true for my parents when they retired.
Being flexible with the spending (and having the means to be flexible) will be key. I also know that if needed, I can dial up the frugality, although I think that wouldn’t be the first choice.
Hi Weenie – I’m pretty sure the RLS figures assume people own their home without a mortgage in retirement if you dig into them so as others have said you should deduct mortgage payments (unless you intend to carry on paying a mortgage after RE).
Hi Sharkey
My annual spend assumes I still have a mortgage so includes my payments/overpayments.
However, what I haven’t accounted for is that at some point, I will either have no mortgage or the payments will be very low, so need to factor that in.
Mortgage is a big thing, especially with the higher interest rates now. Have a look at your spreadsheets again, deducting the mortgage, and I bet that’ll make it seem a lot less gloomy. You might want to consider overpaying, even a small amount each month, unless your investments are doing better than the mortgage interest rate.
Thanks Tina and just doing the sums in my head, without mortgage payments, or with vastly reduced mortgage payments, it does look less gloomy. I am making overpayments, so it looks even better if I remove those from my outgoings, as I’m not always going to making those payments.
Having the £31k and £18k figures available to you as reference points is good to know, especially if you were not planning on ‘Fat Fire’. I wouldn’t want to have to contemplate returning to work, so for me it would be a case of looking at the figures relative to the pot and trying to work out how happy i was with the ratios. I’ve never had faith in the ‘4% Rule’ other than as a benchmark, and i take my hat off to all those brave/optimistic souls who’ve FIRE’d the day they’ve hit it. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night though, so for me it was a case of needing a (big) buffer.
I don’t really track my ‘basic essentials’ figure, but i estimate it to be a similar ratio to actual spend as yours (ie ~60%). I wouldn’t be very happy at all though if i was forced to reduce my spending in retirement by 40%, so for me it was a case of working a few more years until i was very relaxed with the numbers.
Decumulation – Approaching 2 years of retirement now and the frothy stock market has added another generous layer of icing to the buffer, yet i still find myself poring over my so-called decumulation strategy, trying to work out what, if anything, i need to be changing. I’m not actually convinced that i ever managed to complete a solid version 1 of the strategy, but what i do think is that i’m going to be revisiting and refining it regularly for many years to come. For now, i’m happy with that arrangement, and i still can’t quite comprehend the financially astute who hand their entire portfolio over to a financial adviser on the day they retire. Again, i think i’d be losing sleep here.
Hey KC
I too don’t have the blind faith (or confidence) of the 4% rule – I used it merely as a guideline initially when I needed a ‘number’ at the beginning of my journey.
I don’t think I would mind reducing my spending temporarily, I do that now when there are particularly large expenses.
I have a feeling that I will be like you once in my decumulation stage, forever trying to work out if I need to be doing anything different!
Right now, I’m dreading it but only because I don’t have a clear detailed plan yet!
I have tracked our spending for years. It is not unusual to have occasional spendy years! As I see it, you will only be able to tell if ’24 was a spendy year* if you carry on tracking. IMO, tracking should not be painful if you can break your mental association with times gone by (possibly easier said than done) and adopt the following relatively simple things: do it monthly (using bank a/c & card statements or digital equivalents), minimise (ban if possible) spending cash, and build your own spreadsheet.
*FWIW we spent twice as much in ’24 as we usually do
Hi Al Cam
I think I will review my monthly bank statements, that will give me a more accurate view of my spending (big spends) – the mental association with minute tracking might take a while to disappear!
And I think 2024 was a spendy year, so I take some comfort in that!
Hi Weenie. Thanks for you post.
I’m aiming for frugal FIRE. So, that ‘£1,000 a month’ minimum lifestyle. I spent a couple of years tracking my spending and, presents and holidays aside, I could live on this comfortably. I don’t have kids or a mortgage – I paid off my mortgage years ago.
Regarding presents/gifts and holidays, I’ll have to cut my cloth etc… I don’t do much socialising now and, like you, I can see myself happily being a ‘home bug’. If I feel the need for a big, and possibly costly, holiday, then my plan would be to get a temporary/part-time job to pay for such things. I’ve been lucky enough to have travelled the world so there aren’t many places left on my bucket list. It would be maybe repeating favourite trips. I also intend to do away with the car and hire one if I ever need one.
Interestingly – to me, I’ve recently started using Klarna to help pay for gifts, and for a new pair of spectacles for me last year. Christmas and the two following months is always tight due to adjacent birthdays of close family. Using Klarna has been useful to help buy nice presents without having to dip into my emergency fund. I am conscious that I’ve now got a few concurrent Klarna payments on the go which is a concerning development that I’ll have to keep an eye on. Using Klarna is a bit of a triple win – nice presents, interest-free payments and not using my savings – but it’s proving too easy to use.
The key thing for me I’ve found over the years is… Not. Buying. Stuff. It’s stuff for myself that, for me, is the biggest impact on my annual spending. I drastically reduced buying stuff years ago and it enabled me to pay off my mortgage. I’ve continued with this and have been paying 40% into my pension for years. And then I’ve been paying a significant chunk of my net pay into a S&S ISA. With what’s left over, I’ve essentially being living on the equivalent of the living wage in the UK for many years. I’ve reduced my S&S ISA contributions in the past to help pay for holidays and then increased these payments once the holiday has been paid off.
I can stick to this monthly income so that will help me to continue living frugally, not meanly – important distinction, and happily. I punched through my FIRE minimum last year and am now in extra texture territory. If this continues, which possibly isn’t likely given world events atm, then I may achieve ’frugal max FIRE’. I’ve got to be careful of the tax threshold though – that could complicate things. I continue reading blogs about living on £1,000 a month and I feel reassured that I could do it too.
Sorry for the ramble!
If you don’t do so already, consider an online supplier for your glasses. I’ve used Goggles4U for years, and have saved a fortune; owing to my high prescription, my specs would cost me several hundred on the high street, whereas G4U usually costs under £100 for 2 pairs.
I have done a number of times in the past – Glasses Direct. I get varifocals and I wasn’t happy with the quality. I also wasn’t keen on getting varifocals online from anywhere else. I discovered Boots opticians do Klarna so I jumped at the chance of getting hands on professional service. And paying in instalments. Win win.
Yeah, I tried GD as well and wasn’t impressed, and that was only for single vision, so I didn’t want to risk the cost for varifocals. I’ve found G4U to be much better.
Is that Goggles4U?
Hey Chrome Baby
When I first started on my FIRE journey, I think I thought I could do frugal FIRE but it’s not realistic for my lifestyle (even though I do think it’s modest), so kudos to you for still aiming for that, well done! There are some things in my life which are wants and not needs but I deem them as necessary for my happiness and well being!
I recently used Klarna to pay for a big ticket item, thus avoiding dipping into my emergency fund. As extra back up, I do have 0% transfer credit cards to spread payments over 12 months or more if absolutely needed.
Yes, same – I’ve stopped buying stuff. Whilst my lack of spending has enabled me to save/invest more, right now, I’m overpaying my mortgage and I have a plan to pay it off/get it down so it’s just a small debt.
Congrats on getting to your FIRE minimum last year, what an achievement! Now, you’re saving for luxuries, haha!
Thanks for reading and for your sharing your situation in detail.
Hi Weenie,
Thank you for your kind words and for sharing your own experiences! It’s great to hear that you’ve found a balance that works for you, even if frugal FIRE isn’t quite the right fit. Everyone’s journey is unique, and it’s important to prioritise what makes you happy and fulfilled.
Congrats on your progress with overpaying your mortgage. That’s a fantastic achievement and will surely give you more financial freedom in the long run. It’s inspiring to hear how you’ve managed to save and invest more by cutting down on unnecessary spending.
Thank you for the congratulations! It’s been a rewarding journey, and I’m excited to see where it leads. Saving for luxuries is definitely a welcome bonus!
Thanks again for your thoughtful reply and for sharing your journey. It’s always encouraging to connect with others on a similar path.
Very brave 🙂 I also hate working out the cost of living and now download a bank statement in csv and add it to excel and group a few categories, my number is £46K but will reduce after the mortgage is paid. That’s shocking on the living standard. FYI have you ever done pension cash flow modelling as I watched a youtube of a free excel one and its’ incredible I had to do a post about it, would be interesting to know what you or others use?
Hey Sean
No, I haven’t done the pension cash flow modelling so will check it out, thanks
Last time I tracked was 2019, and I decided to do it again this year. You’ve got me terrified for what my number will be this year! Like you, I thought £31k was way off base, but we shall see.
Re hating the tracking. Is it the faff of it all, or is that you associate tracking with being in crappy place/time in your life? If the formed, I totally recommend using an app / service that will link to your bank accounts/credit cards and ‘auto’ track. You obviously have to be happy with the security, but two months in, I can totally recommend.
I used to love tracking manually, and was an absolute zealot, but I know that me now is in a very different place. Thus, I decided to just have my tracking app – toshl.com – linked to my current account(s) and credit cards and be done with it. (I did also create a manual “savings account” as I didn’t want to try and link every single savings account, and a “cash” account for the very few cash transaction I do.) I absolute don’t try and make it balance/reflect all my real number but just use to track spending. I spent a few hours setting it up (I used it manually the last time round, so didn’t have a learning curve on the app) and then spend an hour or less every week/couple of weeks sorting transactions. There is free version, but I think you have to pay to link multiple accounts.
At any rate, if it’s the faff you can’t stand, I’d suggest something like the above.
Good luck!
P.S. Been following for *at least* a few years, but first time commenting. 🙂
Hey Laura
Firstly, thanks very much for reading and commenting! Much appreciated 🙂
Good luck with your tracking and nope not too many surprises!
It’s not the faff of tracking, it’s the mental association with a bad place in my life. I would have said that things had improved, otherwise I would not have attempted the tracking exercise in the first place but mentally, it seemed to get worse the longer I tracked. So I’ll take another break before I try again, although as explained in other replies, I will check my bank statements to spot any outrageous spending patterns!
An interesting and thought provoking post. I’m on the other side of the FIRE wall – retired 4 years now, not sure where the time went! We live together but not married so have separate finance arrangements but we share the household bills 50/50 via a joint account.
I’ve never done the monthly tracking to the penny – it does sound depressing if you’ve overcome debt issues in the past. Like some others I download all the bank statements / CSV files and spreadsheet the numbers out of it at the end of each year (since 2018). I work out what our joint total spend was, the costs to run our household (bills, council tax, food) and what my own spend is including my share of the household costs so I can work out what pension income I need to be aiming for to take out of my SIPP plan. I think knowing these numbers in the years up to retirement really helps, I never did it when I was younger.
My own spend went down when my partner started taking her teachers pension the year before I stopped working. I never knew what she’d get so I allowed for covering all our household costs myself planning on £25k to £30k back in 2020 (don’t quiz a stressed maths teacher on finances!). I was a bit shocked to see the amount for a couple on the RLS site for the Moderate lifestyle had gone to over £40k, but our spend is always more towards the minimum end. I’m not sure how people spend “up to £1,500” on clothing in a year? Our joint spend on household costs and holidays is within £30k from what I worked out. I was lucky that my other half could after all cover her share of our household costs, a bit of a bonus – it is an advantage of living together compared to being on your own.
I personally spent more in 2024 as I dropped about £6k on private dental work, NHS drilled and filled many of my teeth when I was a teenager and that problem came home to roost. The missing teeth were driving me nuts so I got implant teeth done, a great solution if you can afford it. I just log stuff like this as a one-off cost and don’t figure it in the budget plan. There always seems to be a different one-off though..emergency cash fund is definitely needed.
Does your FIRE plan include offing the mortgage before your press the eject from work button? I remember a friend of ours telling us he’d forgot to allow for that in his finances when he retired and also he’d still included the pension deductions from his salary in his outgoings!
Hi Bill
Thanks for commenting and sharing your experiences. 4 years retired – time flies when you are having fun! 🙂
My spending on household stuff is known, it was the discretionary stuff which had ballooned and now I think 2024 was a spendy year so not every year will be like that (hopefully!)
From RLS, the “£1500 people spend on clothing” I allocated to something else – fairly certain that I’ve spent less than that on clothes in the last decade, haha!
Sorry to hear that you had to drop £6k on dental work but I foresee that kind of expense in the future, so definitely need to keep the emergency fund topped up!
My mortgage won’t have been paid off by the time I press the eject from work button but is accounted for in my expenses. So as I pay it down/pay it off, my outgoings will be less, so it doesn’t look quite so bad!
Having gone through the transition myself I would underscore that your spending while working will be very different to your spending while not working so don’t get overly attached to your analytics. And this is more about composition than quantum.
My spending while working was significantly inflated by commuting costs (~£6k pa), “work wear” and meals away from home (mostly lunches). I appreciate that I was 100% office based and that a home worker wouldn’t have those large costs.
Once I stopped working those costs pretty much fell away and as I stopped working earlier than many of my peers I definitely felt a sizeable windfall up until … once various other of my friends stopped working and there were more people to “muck about” with then my spending picked up on meals out and recreation and travel.
I think now things have stabilised I probably spend slightly less than when I was working but this is partly because I am more conscious of my spending (without being frugal necessarily) whereas when I was earning I didn’t really blink about lots of small stuff that all added up; a good example is that I now rarely ever pay for parking as I have the time both to prepare/research any excursions and, with relaxed visits out, I am happy to walk a bit “and smell the roses” rather than needing to be in and out purely for convenience.
Nice comment. A lot of what you say resonates with our experience to date – including the subsequent tick up too!
Hi Graham
Thanks for commenting and sharing your experiences.
I don’t have so many commuting/work costs now that I work mostly from home, but the work dos and the work lunches when I am in do add up.
Most of my friends are younger than I am, so I will have to wait for them to retire, or (more likely) make some new ‘retired’ friends. My sister will be retired so I could ‘muck about’ with her, though I imagine she will be travelling a lot.
As you have shared, I imagine my spending in retirement will vary as my life stabilises.
Hi Weenie,
I’m a bit late to this one, but it’s a fascinating and incredibly important subject and I wanted a more time to re-read your post and the replies.
I’ve tracked my spending for years, I enjoy it, and it’s fundamental to my understanding of when I can retire and on how much. I appreciate you do not enjoy tracking as it gives you PTSD of the spendy past. As usual, I swear you are me, and my spending was pretty much yours for 2024, I spent £32,756. What this figure did not include was the 25k I spent on a kitchen diner complete refurb, rewire, ceilings down, new downstairs rads etc, because I will have a separate cash fund in retirement for big ticket items i.e. replacement car, major work to the house etc.
So crudely worked out I spent £32,756. In retirement I won’t have a mortgage so thats £9,500 less per year = £23,256. I am going to add in private healthcare at a conservative figure of £2,400 = £25,656. I’ll also need to pay for a mobile phone (I get that paid via work presently), so call it another £600pa = £26,256pa.
Allowing for tax I’m going to need £30,00pa! I’ll have a slush fund for big ticket items (which I don’t think is enough btw). I may inherit, I may not, but that can’t be accounted for. My partner does contribute to bills (I own the house), but again I can’t factor that in.
Yikes, like you, I’m in line with ONS moderate lifestyle! Worryingly the only holiday I had last year in terms of going away was 4 days in Portugal, which cost next to nothing. To echo you again, spendy nights out are rare now and I’ve just been living. I have decisions and projections to make too, but I refuse to stay in corporate after aged 59, that’s non negotiable as health comes before anything else.
Hi Starla
I think it’s quite amazing (and somewhat funny!) that our spending is so similar haha!
It actually provides me with some comfort this is some ‘proof’ that I am living what I deem to be an ‘ordinary’ life, or at least, one which costs the same as your life, haha!
I hope to have a separate cash fund for big ticket items. Or I’ll still be making the most of my 0% credit cards to spread out the payments.
Unlike you, I will still have my mortgage until I’m 65, at which point I will have the option to pay off the balance with 25% of my DB pension if I choose to. I hadn’t considered private healthcare to be honest, but it makes sense so I think I will need to bump my ‘dental fund’ into a bigger general health fund. I haven’t researched getting medical insurance recently but I do recall it wasn’t cheap.
Right now, I can’t contemplate staying in corporate after the age of 59 – this long Easter weekend of pottering with no plans has been blissful and I can’t wait til I can do it all the time!
And lol @ your almost identical figures 😀
Ha ha… you have no idea how useful your blog is to me! Same age, DB pensions drawable at same time, similar net worth, both got our act together around 2012, now we spend the same annually… AND you like darts!
Edit: Meant to add, as a crude breakdown my figures are almost identical to yours.
Spent: £32,756pa
Fixed Outgoings: £1500pm (£800 mortgage/£700 fixed bills divided by 12) = £18,000pa
Spending on “stuff/food/petrol/life”: £14,756pa