How much pension for a comfortable life?

CharleyGirl. I could buy two houses without selling my current one if I had to. But I have no intention of moving. I have an easy maintenance garden and I would get a man in.I am sure I could afford that.

By "painting" I mean painting walls and such like. Decorating.

I would say we spend around £1000 on DIY and garden a year and Hubby has his van which takes around another £700 (but we probably wouldn't need that when I retire.

I suspect we might live reasonably on around £10K including all household bills and food right now and we both have anything we want so its not frugal. But hubby listens to the BBC and their doom stories and thinks we have to have lots of money in retirement.

abby you appear to have a large garden- how will you maintain that when you are older? Would you have to consider moving? Could you cope at your present residence if for any reason one or both of you could no longer drive? Moving house can eat into the funds but many times it is a necessity especially if downsizing is on the cards.

Having a cat myself I am well aware of the cost so that has to be factored in.

To be honest I am really waiting to retire. My pension age was increased by call me "Dave" Cameron and co. I earn around £13K and as I said, I will get around £10K in pension as far as I have been able to establish. Hubby already has £18K

Yes, the car has to take me to work. We also runa little car from hubby to take himself about. We wont need that when I am retired.

I dont know exactly what we spend now and I will work it out but I was looking for a ball park figure. I also know we "live" easily on my £13K now. Hubby's money is not touched.

In fact in the last three years we have saved money.I have two current accounts , each started 3 years ago with £8K in thenm as a balance and now each has over £20K in it. (I moved money from the joint current account into savings and then split the account into two banks because of the £75K in one banking group rules)

I have a lot of savings and two substantial inheritances ...... so I would rather not have to look at those because frankly, I seem to always have trouble moving money to different savings accounts, something to do with not passing the "Experian test" - not because I have debts but because I dont have any debts and no passport either!. Cant provide the documentation the banks seem to need these days.

Anyway, that aside. I am not looking at big hobbies. My hubby likes to mess around with computers and does some DIY ( he was a tradesman). I like painting , having a nice home, but I have two cats so nothing fancy or show house) and a large 1/2 acre garden. Then there would be maintenance of house costs etc. although I have been doing the house up recently to save on that when I retire.

I dont need holidays. We dont do them anyway. I would be happy being at home. I hate working. I hate going out.

Before I retired I had always run spreadsheets detailing the household expenditure with projections forward so I had an idea of what we would need. This enabled us to retire a couple of years earlier than planned as we didn't need as much as we had first thought. I would always recommend do the accounts daily (I use internet banking so its easy)so no surprises and good forward planning. As others have said it all depends on your lifestyle and expectations. We aren't wealthy by any means but have a good life doing what we want by and large with some compromises thrown in. My big extravagance is good food from the more expensive shops but we don't eat out a lot. Its all a balancing act. Good luck with your retirement plans.

abbey Printmiss is right - it depends what you want.

Try to work out how much you spend on food, council tax, energy costs, house maintenance, your car, clothes, going out, other miscellaneous expenses.

Then see if your £28K will be enough to cover it.It helps if you keep household accounts so ou know what you're spending.
Something to bear in mind is that it actually costs you money to go out to work and you may find after you stop work, that it costs less to run your car, if you use that to go to work, you spend less on clothes and you can spend less on food if you cook more from scratch than when you're working.

Have a look at your savings and see if that money could work harder for you and provide some income too.

Surely it depends what you expect out of life? You going cruising round the world - you need a lot, you staying home and gardening, producing your own food, you need less. In any case who knows what the future holds. If you have enough coming in to fill your needs then you are probably 'comfortably off', but it depends on your needs. When we first started saving for a pension £1,000 year income was considered a good income! Times change.