I suppose it depends where you go asking the question, and the stats are very much skewed by lumping everyone in together, if you put a couple of dozen billionaires in a room with the posters on this thread and then worked out our average savings pot after lumping us together then we’d all come out looking fairly well-heeledMr. Dazzle wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 11:40 am
I've got more than that and I'm 39
Deffo a string question though
Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
- Count Steer
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
To be fair, it's not Google saying it but yes, if that average is cashable savings, I'd say it's bolleaux. Most folk at 45 are up to their neck in mortgage rather than salting it away.Potter wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 11:17 am Google says all sorts of tosh, like the average savings (not pension, just savings) of a 45yr old is about three times their yearly salary or just over £100k - which I think is utter cobblers, what average 45yr old has a hundred grand stashed away.
Obviously I know people with that amount and more, but they’re exceptions, most normal working class people I know don’t have six figures in their savings account.
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But certainty is an absurd one.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
You could put it into a SIPP based on investments of your choice. Take out the initial tax free slab and stick it in ISAs and then pull/draw down the rest over time in a tax effective fashion and use it as part of your annual ISA allowance...or something along those lines.
Difficult to pull it all without the tax man sharpening his carving knife.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition.
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But certainty is an absurd one.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
We’re maxed out on allowances now.Count Steer wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 12:40 pmYou could put it into a SIPP based on investments of your choice. Take out the initial tax free slab and stick it in ISAs and then pull/draw down the rest over time in a tax effective fashion and use it as part of your annual ISA allowance...or something along those lines.
Difficult to pull it all without the tax man sharpening his carving knife.
The allowance rules are a joke, as I understand it you can earn up to £18k each tax free from interest as long as you don’t have any income from anywhere else. It’s your usual allowance, plus a grand, plus an extra five grand special allowance if you don’t have any other income, but if you do have any income then you lose the extra five grand allowance. So bizarrely it seems that if you take a job and earn even just a pound then you lose the whole five grand allowance.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
There's no max total on ISAs just the £20k pa each, so you could drip feed it out of the SIPP using draw-down in 5+ years time making sure you didn't eg take enough to put you in another tax band in a year.Potter wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 1:38 pmWe’re maxed out on allowances now.Count Steer wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 12:40 pmYou could put it into a SIPP based on investments of your choice. Take out the initial tax free slab and stick it in ISAs and then pull/draw down the rest over time in a tax effective fashion and use it as part of your annual ISA allowance...or something along those lines.
Difficult to pull it all without the tax man sharpening his carving knife.
The allowance rules are a joke, as I understand it you can earn up to £18k each tax free from interest as long as you don’t have any income from anywhere else. It’s your usual allowance, plus a grand, plus an extra five grand special allowance if you don’t have any other income, but if you do have any income then you lose the extra five grand allowance. So bizarrely it seems that if you take a job and earn even just a pound then you lose the whole five grand allowance.
Yeah the allowances can be arcane. My bro retired and his employers wanted him to go back on a casual basis from time to time. He did for a little while then decided the only people (apart from the employer) that were benefiting were HMRC. After tax it made his daily rate rather .
Doubt is not a pleasant condition.
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But certainty is an absurd one.
Voltaire
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
If you work for a decent company who put a good % of your salary in your pot and you match it, it'll build up quite nicely, particularly if you're young, so at 57 ?? retirement could be doable.
Trouble is, these poxy politicians keep increasing the age that you can get your hands on it. I think the state pension will slowly become unreachable for some, based on this myth that we're all living longer.
Drawing a pension is definitely all about tax avoidance and identifying the loop holes.
Trouble is, these poxy politicians keep increasing the age that you can get your hands on it. I think the state pension will slowly become unreachable for some, based on this myth that we're all living longer.
Drawing a pension is definitely all about tax avoidance and identifying the loop holes.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
I’ve heard of guys getting by on a pension, then taking on a small job to pass the time, then finding most of the wage from the small job is taxed at “Higher Rate,” especially in Scotland.Count Steer wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 2:37 pm
Yeah the allowances can be arcane. My bro retired and his employers wanted him to go back on a casual basis from time to time. He did for a little while then decided the only people (apart from the employer) that were benefiting were HMRC. After tax it made his daily rate rather .
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
It's a double (maybe even triple!) whammy.
Life expectancy is going up, birth rates are coming down. So not only are people living longer (I.e. there are more retired people) there are a fewer young people to replace them as tax payers. Triple whammy cause the aging population needs more and more expensive medical care.
There are two obvious solutions: Raise retirement age. Or, my personal favourite as I've said many times, mandatory televised death matches for the over 60s
With any luck ChatGPT will save us.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
I tend to believe that there's just more old people than there has been in the passed. Have a walk around a cemetery and look at the headstones, I have.
Delaying folk getting there own workplace pensions is just scandalous. I do think taxpayer's money could be spent a lot smarter and undoing the call for us all to work longer.
Delaying folk getting there own workplace pensions is just scandalous. I do think taxpayer's money could be spent a lot smarter and undoing the call for us all to work longer.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
Why?
They're trying to stop people spaffing it all by the time they're 62 and being a drain on the tax payers (which there wont be ebough of) for another 25 years.
You're free to save money in places whcih don't give tax breaks if you prefer
They're trying to stop people spaffing it all by the time they're 62 and being a drain on the tax payers (which there wont be ebough of) for another 25 years.
You're free to save money in places whcih don't give tax breaks if you prefer
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
It's not that long since you couldn't get your hands on your pension at 55 never mind pulling a tax free chunk out of it. Not really thought through given increasing life expectancies and declining birth rates eh?Mr. Dazzle wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 5:44 pm Why?
They're trying to stop people spaffing it all by the time they're 62 and being a drain on the tax payers (which there wont be ebough of) for another 25 years.
You're free to save money in places whcih don't give tax breaks if you prefer
Doubt is not a pleasant condition.
But certainty is an absurd one.
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But certainty is an absurd one.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
The only thing that gives me the hump is the £5k special allowance that disappears entirely once you earn a pound in income that comes from paid employment, so you can quite literally be worse off because you work.Count Steer wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 2:37 pm
There's no max total on ISAs just the £20k pa each, so you could drip feed it out of the SIPP using draw-down in 5+ years time making sure you didn't eg take enough to put you in another tax band in a year.
Yeah the allowances can be arcane. My bro retired and his employers wanted him to go back on a casual basis from time to time. He did for a little while then decided the only people (apart from the employer) that were benefiting were HMRC. After tax it made his daily rate rather .
Based on what we reckon the £38k tax-free interest pa will be enough anyway, but I might want to work and I don't think it's fair to lose allowances just because you've gone and got a job. If we both get jobs that's a £10k allowance that we've just lost, so we'd have to pay 20% or 40% tax on that lost £10k, depending on total income.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
Anyway, just out of interest, what do you reckon is enough to retire with?
(if your house is paid for, you have no debt and you have sensible expectations)
My mate did it a couple of years ago with half a million in the bank, him and his wife work a couple of days a week in department stores and that pays all of his bills and most of his food money, so he only dips into his half a million for the odd holiday or something. My other mate did it on £750k that he has invested in bonds returning about 5% and he doesn't work at all, he has about £3k a month coming in and that's enough.
(if your house is paid for, you have no debt and you have sensible expectations)
My mate did it a couple of years ago with half a million in the bank, him and his wife work a couple of days a week in department stores and that pays all of his bills and most of his food money, so he only dips into his half a million for the odd holiday or something. My other mate did it on £750k that he has invested in bonds returning about 5% and he doesn't work at all, he has about £3k a month coming in and that's enough.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
Do you have a link for info on that?
All I can see on .gov is:
Your tax-free Personal Allowance
The standard Personal Allowance is £12,570, which is the amount of income you do not have to pay tax on.
Your Personal Allowance may be bigger if you claim Marriage Allowance or Blind Person’s Allowance. It’s smaller if your income is over £100,000.
I'm drawing a final salary type pension, and will get the state pension later this year.
But I also work part-time - and won't get anywhere near enough to cover £5k, whether as additional tax-free or anything else.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
We get by on under £3k a month. Obviously we have no heating bills but it costs us about £3,000 in private health costs.
We live very nicely, but not spending for the sake of it.
We live very nicely, but not spending for the sake of it.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
I really don't know what a lump sum figure would be tbh - and people's needs/expectations vary. I think if I worked out the lump sum equivalent of our company pensions I'd be a bit (Although we both left the jobs with final salary pensions some years before we actually retired so didn't have the full 40/60ths of final salary or whatever the max was in them. I know some people that stuck with average jobs in companies like that and their buy out figure for their pension - if they'd been daft enough to accept - was over £1M).Potter wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 3:14 pm Anyway, just out of interest, what do you reckon is enough to retire with?
(if your house is paid for, you have no debt and you have sensible expectations)
My mate did it a couple of years ago with half a million in the bank, him and his wife work a couple of days a week in department stores and that pays all of his bills and most of his food money, so he only dips into his half a million for the odd holiday or something. My other mate did it on £750k that he has invested in bonds returning about 5% and he doesn't work at all, he has about £3k a month coming in and that's enough.
If I waved a wet finger in the air I'd say, for a couple, used to a reasonably comfortable existence, £3k a month is a minimum, £5k a month is 'comfy' and an emergency stash is a nice to have. As I say, needs/expectations vary and £3k/month would keep some folk quite happy.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Voltaire
But certainty is an absurd one.
Voltaire
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
Hold on a sec. Without a mortgage you think £3000 a month is a minimum and £5000 a month comfortable?
They seem very high to me.
They seem very high to me.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
We came over here with a pot of cash.
When we bought this villa, we worked out that we had about £30k a year to live on till our pensions kicked in 12 years away
And we've kept to that quite easily.
The income from the apartment also meant that the pot is still healthy.
Last edited by Yorick on Mon Feb 19, 2024 6:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
Reckon we could manage on £1500 a month.
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Re: Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?
Yep, just about spot on. I've shared my info previously, so won't state it again, but I think your damp digit is pretty accurate.Count Steer wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 5:02 pmI really don't know what a lump sum figure would be tbh - and people's needs/expectations vary. I think if I worked out the lump sum equivalent of our company pensions I'd be a bit (Although we both left the jobs with final salary pensions some years before we actually retired so didn't have the full 40/60ths of final salary or whatever the max was in them. I know some people that stuck with average jobs in companies like that and their buy out figure for their pension - if they'd been daft enough to accept - was over £1M).Potter wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 3:14 pm Anyway, just out of interest, what do you reckon is enough to retire with?
(if your house is paid for, you have no debt and you have sensible expectations)
My mate did it a couple of years ago with half a million in the bank, him and his wife work a couple of days a week in department stores and that pays all of his bills and most of his food money, so he only dips into his half a million for the odd holiday or something. My other mate did it on £750k that he has invested in bonds returning about 5% and he doesn't work at all, he has about £3k a month coming in and that's enough.
If I waved a wet finger in the air I'd say, for a couple, used to a reasonably comfortable existence, £3k a month is a minimum, £5k a month is 'comfy' and an emergency stash is a nice to have. As I say, needs/expectations vary and £3k/month would keep some folk quite happy.