What could you get by on?

[Paddy]

It's a question I have been asking myself a lot recently.

I am 49 and have been pretty crap at contributing to pensions.

I have about £300k in the pot ATM which does not equate to a great annuity using online calculators.

I could (and really should) max out my pension contributions without really noticing however I wonder if it is still worth buying a BTL and just leave it to pay for itself as well.

In my lifetime I had three pensions. Two pension companies went bust. The third "Standard Life" returned 50% of what I put in. However, direct investment in property has done very well.

[d000hg]

Maybe but they quite possibly spent their entire career being unable to afford to do many things - chained to a low salary because the pension scheme was good.

Not really. Teacher salaries aren't brilliant by our standards but are quite reasonable given the amount of time off, and the fact until recently you got automatic promotion up the pay-scale every year. Certainly more than lots of people earn doing office jobs.
Police used to earn well and retire early and get brilliant pensions on top.

If you wanted to retire rich, no good but if you wanted to live comfortably and retire without a care, it was great.
It's not like teachers now earn more, they get paid about the same but the pensions have been sliced to be more realistic.

[malvolio]

Not really. Teacher salaries aren't brilliant by our standards but are quite reasonable given the amount of time off, and the fact until recently you got automatic promotion up the pay-scale every year. Certainly more than lots of people earn doing office jobs.
Police used to earn well and retire early and get brilliant pensions on top.

If you wanted to retire rich, no good but if you wanted to live comfortably and retire without a care, it was great.
It's not like teachers now earn more, they get paid about the same but the pensions have been sliced to be more realistic.

OTOH her indoors was the laboratory manager of a hospital microbiology lab for many years with 100 staff and a budgets of several millions, ensuring delivery of a service that is life critical (as in if you don't get it right 100% of the time someone dies...) and routinely worked 10-12 hours a day. She was qualified to a higher level than most of the doctors she was dealing with on a daily basis. She never earned more than £50k a year. Her inflation proofed pension of half her final year's salary is a reasonable compensation, in my (admittedly biased) view.

[OwlHoot]

I plan on going postal once the bank accounts are empty. ..

Watch out for those pheasants!

[d000hg]

OTOH her indoors was the laboratory manager of a hospital microbiology lab for many years with 100 staff and a budgets of several millions, ensuring delivery of a service that is life critical (as in if you don't get it right 100% of the time someone dies...) and routinely worked 10-12 hours a day. She was qualified to a higher level than most of the doctors she was dealing with on a daily basis. She never earned more than £50k a year. Her inflation proofed pension of half her final year's salary is a reasonable compensation, in my (admittedly biased) view.

Sounds like she should've worked harder at her career

[malvolio]

Sounds like she should've worked harder at her career

Did the job well, was top of all her pay grades had published papers and made a significant contribution to raising national standards across all NHS/HCA labs...

Difficult to see what else she could have done. Become a diversity officer perhaps.... seems they average over £50k mostly from home.

[d000hg]

Did the job well, was top of all her pay grades had published papers and made a significant contribution to raising national standards across all NHS/HCA labs...

Difficult to see what else she could have done. Become a diversity officer perhaps.... seems they average over £50k mostly from home.

Work for someone else, is more what I was thinking

[vetran]

Once mortgage paid off and kids left home then £2k a month would be enough. £3k is probably comfortable.

[WTFH]

Go through your monthly outgoings...
House:
Electricity
Gas
Oil
Water
Council Tax
Broadband
Phone
TV
etc

Then:
Bank fees
Mobile phone
Road Fund Licence
Car servicing/tyres/MOT
Membership of organisations (AA/RAC/National Trust/etc)
etc.

Then after that add in food & drink, holidays, etc.

[Paralytic]

Oh some of the pensions are crazy if you were in the public sector. These final-salary pensions where you retire and just keep getting paid forever, on your final salary. I've no idea what sort of ROI you are getting on your contribution but it's clear you're getting FAR more out than you ever put in.

I've never heard of one final salary scheme that paid out the employees final salary in perpetuity. The most I'd ever seen/heard of is 2/3rds of final salary assuming 40 years service (lesser service would reduce the 2/3rd pro-rata). But, those stopped to new entrants a long time ago.

Can you provide details, or is this one of those millennial myths that get passed around as fact when they're whinging and blaming boomers for everything that's making life so unfair for them?

(no, i'm not a boomer)