How much monthly income do I need if I retire now?

Nice one, WhiteCoat, I'm on it.

Presumably, the Duke is being, atypically, provocative? It is just a bit disappointing that his counting skills are letting him down! [I guess some people just find sums hard ]

[At least, the Duke invariably has the good grace to acknowledge the occasional error......unlike some I could mention who surreptitiously correct errors leaving my apparent subsequent correction (in a later post) swinging to all put the most attentive of observers. Cryptic or what?!]
 
Don't get this!

Ahhh! get it now
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
Let's build the budget from the ground up.
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I think for me your budget is on the high side, I appreciate everybody's spending and budgeting is going to be slightly different but I still think €73k pa is excessive and I presume that's a net figure
I'm 52 now and have been retired now for 8 years, there's just the two of us and a cat and have a basic living budget of about €20K p.a which includes a lot of your "luxuries"
Grocery shopping €4000, Gas €1100, Elec €800, BB €420, Waste €170, Sky+ Tv licence €600, Mobile x2 €360, House expenditure including LPT and insurance €1500
Medical insurance x 2 €2380, Medical other €600, Cars x 2 (tax, insurance, servicing) €2000, Petrol €1000, Social spending (meals out takeaways etc etc) €2800, Personal spending €2500

What's not included in above 20K budget is large or optional "luxury" expenditure like replacing a car, major repairs to the house, new bicycles for me and holidays for one or both of us etc etc
This extra spending is and imo should be funded from your "retirement fund or emergency fund" and is not really factored in to the yearly budget per se but rather the long term budget
A perfect example of this is my car which is a 131, I wont start thinking about changing it for at least five years and then I'll review the finances overall, make a few changes if needed and buy
I don't factor in depreciation because I don't think of it as an expense per se but rather as a once off purchase that serves a useful and valuable function, like buying a television

For us a annual budget of about €35k net is ample for our needs, some years its going to be more than enough to cover all our expenditure and other years its not which is when the overall fund kicks in
 
Cervelo said:
I think for me your budget is on the high side, I appreciate everybody's spending and budgeting is going to be slightly different but I still think €73k pa is excessive and I presume that's a net figure.
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Fascinating post Cervelo. I was not, as suggested elsewhere, being deliberately provocative in my post. I would say that many of the items in that post are not a million miles away from our personal circumstance so I was interested to do comparisons.
First of all myself and the Duchess are in our retirement and are empty nesters. Also we don't even keep a goldfish never mind a cat or a dog. Despite my aristocratic lineage I do do not believe we have a particularly extravagant lifestyle. So these are some comparisons.

Electricity and Gas: Cerv €1,900, The Duke €3,000. I don't go round turning lights off and things like that but I didn't think we were particularly extravagant in energy usage.
BB: ?
Sky & TV licence (phone and Internet): Cerv €600 The Duke €1,900
Medical Insurance: Cerv €2,380 The Duke: €6,000. okay maybe I could drop down a level but I am by no means near the top level
Car fuel: (I drive a diesel, the Duchess is petrol) Cerv €1,000 The Duke: €4,500, I reckon that you are only doing 5k kms per car per annum. Do you need two cars? any cars?
Ciggies and booze: Cerv €0; The Duke ahhh! that would be telling
I note that neither you nor your other half have expensive hobbies and you haven't evaluated costs of holidays.

I take your point on depreciation. I think keeping a car for 10 years is reasonable for modern cars. So maybe depreciation is only about €6k p.a. for 2 cars unlike the BIK which would be based on 3 years depreciation and would maybe be €10k p.a. But it is a "running cost" albeit in cashflow terms it is not incurred every year.

However, I accept your point that with a little bit of belt tightening one could live reasonably comfortably on somewhat less than €6k per month. It also underpins the point oft made in this parish that our social protection nets are very generous.
 
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This is fascinating, I haven't the exact breakdown figures for my budget although I could easily go find them but know that 15k p.a is my living expenses. I am on my own and of course the cat! That is a very basic lifestyle in my opinion and I like the odd coffee/scone out and maybe lunch but would only do dinner out maybe once or twice a year, don't drink/smoke or have any expensive hobbies. I would manage a holiday every second year maybe, I have a newish car bought 2 yrs ago from savings so it is cheaper to run that the old one in every respect and hopefully it will last for a long time. I consider I run a very tight ship and only this week switched between utility providers again for best value. Unfortunately whether there is one or two in the house the broadband costs the same, pretty much ditto with gas/electricity so there are savings for couples obviously.
 

Our Gas heating is on 24/7 from November to end of April but is controlled by a nest thermostat set to 18'c our boiler is a 10 year old Viessmann condensing boiler and gas supplied by Airtricity
I'm not sure if that's expensive probably depends more on the size of the property but for us its an acceptable cost
BB is Fibre Broadband from Vodafone @ 35pm no landline as we use the mobiles
Medical insurance is Laya Simplicity, which for us at this stage is more than enough cover
Re the cars we don't do big mileage, her car is 12 years old now and only has 51k on it, mine has 60K but I bought it in 2014 with 22kon the clock and have done two big road trips to southern Spain in the last two years
We could for the most part do with one car and it might be something to think about at a later date but again at the moment its an acceptable cost
We don't really drink anymore, maybe a bottle or two of wine when eating out, we get our kicks elsewhere
I don't smoke anymore but herself smokes about 20 a day but this costs her less the €2k per year as we generally buy in cheaper countries like Spain and sneak them back in

Now for the good bit re the holidays and hobbies
I love to ride (stop it) and it has been an expensive hobby for me but at this stage I have all the equipment and clothes and accessories that I need, so its just servicing parts at the moment most of which I can install or repair myself, probably costs me 500 to 1K a year in parts but if I was to buy two new bikes today and kit them out the way I like and desire there would be little change from 15K might even be more
Travel/holidays is something the two of us love to do and at the moment we're on a USA road trip buzz which costs about €8 to10k per 21/25 day trip, we fly economy and don't stay in expensive hotels mainly Days Inns and Comfort Inn type places and drive a medium range car like a Nissan Altima, the basic package costs about €5 to 6K and the rest is food, petrol, attraction fees and a bit of shopping

I said in my earlier post that we budget around €35k per year which is normal about right but if I'm honest last year we spent close to €50k but we packed a lot in, I spent 4 months riding in Spain, both of us spent nearly 2 months together on road trips in the USA and Europe and a cigarette holiday for herself and then there were a few unforeseen expenses like new tv (€2k), laptop(€1.4k) and I had to get my eyes tested which resulted a couple of pairs of varifocals and some new sports glasses (€2k)

This year to balance out the overspend, I didn't go to Spain to cycle and we're both not planning any big holidays at the moment except for a maybe cigarette run for herself so this should result in this years budget been closer to the €20 to 25K mark
 
Some interesting talking points there Cervelo. The Duchess also smokes ciggies and I like a cigar, we try to source all our purchases in France/Italy - my cigars are 3 times dearer in Ireland than in France. Once I run out of my French supplies I do not on principle buy any in Ireland, just give them up till my next visit. I didn't think there was anything sneaky in sourcing our tobacco needs in France/Italy.

I happen to be in the market to buy a new TV and was looking at the Power City/DID/Harvey Norman websites. About €600 would seem to cover my needs (49in Smart TV). Why did you spend €2k on a TV? Any tips on what to look out for?

And €2k on sports glasses I needed a pair of glasses recently. I used an old prescription from SpecSavers and ordered online from Goggles4U. €20 including postage and they're absolutely fine
 
Cervelo said:
I think for me your budget is on the high side, I appreciate everybody's spending and budgeting is going to be slightly different but I still think €73k p.a. is excessive and I presume that's a net figure
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Cervelo - see Elac's Specific theory of relativity. Seriously. If you've been highly paid (or, for example, you were an only child and your folks lived in a pad in D4, or pretty much anywhere in The Naul these days, etc., etc.), chances are that €6k a month net may not seem, at all, excessive. You, for example, retired at 45 (help me out with the sums here, Duke, 52 minus 8) and have €35k a year to spend. I could imagine the math being pretty simple to show that had you had delayed your retirement by X years, you'd be looking at a much more substantial income (i.e. the virtuous triumvirate of more "pension contributions" in one form or another, greater investment time and reduced drawdown time).

[The dynamics of delaying retirement and its consequent probable impact on retirement income is so well appreciated by certain of our US cousins that it's readily understood by its acronym, OMY (One more year). Bottom line, if €35k is your annual budget, then ordinarily it could have been higher, potentially a lot higher, if you had done some/many more OMYs!]

All that said, there is certainly a balance (individual balance?) to be struck between how long to work and how much income you need. Haven't dwelt on this too much personally because, I'm lucky - I love my job and get paid good. I probably could retire now but why should I stop if I love what I do? Could I be one of those weird lads who, when the time arrives to slip away, gives one last pathetic croak of remorse....that I hadn't spent...………….a little more time at de office!!??
 
Duke,
AFAIK the limit on importing tobacco products from other European countries is around 400 per person, I could be wrong as I haven't checked the limits in a long time
Re the TV, I watch a lot of television and DVDs and have always had a big screen and when my last one broke I decided to take the opportunity to move up to a 65" one and I have a fondness for Sony products
Can't say it is any better then the TV you are looking at but at the time the reviews for my TV were good, it ticked all the boxes in terms of picture quality (UHD) and HDMI ports and functionality and would fit in the space where I have my TV and takes me another step closer to the home cinema that I dream of
Re the glasses, I didn't spend 2k on just sport glasses, the sport element of that 2k was €900 which was 3 pairs of Rudy Project Tralyx with an extra 3 lenses and 2 prescription inserts
Unfortunately I couldn't find an Irish retailer or optician that could do the package as cheap as I was prepared to pay so I used Vision3k in the UK who did my last batch of sport glasses 10+ years ago

elacsaplau,
I never said I have "35k a year to spend" but rather that we try to live within a 35k a year budget, its a choice that we make and for the most part it covers our lifestyle
re the retiring at 45, To put it as simple as I can, I came to a point in my life where I had to make a decision or a choice if you like based on what was going on with me and around me and it came down to this
Do I want to work until I hit retirement age and hope that a. I get there and b. I get to enjoy it or do I retire now and get to enjoy it now for however long it lasts ??
Well you don't have to guess which way I went
 
Cervelo said:
I never said I have "35k a year to spend" but rather that we try to live within a 35k a year budget, its a choice that we make and for the most part it covers our lifestyle
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Absolutely true and I apologise for missing that detail in your post. Of course, my specific theory still holds, as do my OMY observations.

Cervelo said:
re the retiring at 45, To put it as simple as I can, I came to a point in my life where I had to make a decision or a choice if you like based on what was going on with me and around me and it came down to this
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elacsaplau said:
All that said, there is certainly a balance (individual balance?) to be struck between how long to work and how much income you need.
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I think we are saying essentially the same thing. What divides is not as great as what unites us - other than to say that I'm a bit confused about the math in relation to your retirement age...…..my calcs were late night humour!
 
Cervelo said:
Duke,
AFAIK the limit on importing tobacco products from other European countries is around 400 per person, I could be wrong as I haven't checked the limits in a long time
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There are technically no limits provided they are for personal use. They give an indication that 800 cigs and 200 cigars would be acceptable for personal use. The implication is that anything more would not be, but this is bluff IMHO. They do not state categorically that you would be done if in excess of that and it is not against the law. Nor could it be as we are good EU members aren't we?

The onus to declare is if they are not for personal use, even if it is only one packet that you have for resale. If your other half is bringing in 7,000 for next year's personal use, no need to declare, nothing sneaky about it. Of course if the customs folk see them and query the personal use aspect you might say that you too are a smoker, though that would be sneaky My guess is they wouldn't bother run the risk of a high profile EU ruling even though you were considerably in excess of that guideline. (caveat, this is my read, get legal advice if unsure)

I think the smaller TV will do me, I have seen a recommendation to get at least 3 HDMI ports.
 
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elacsaplau, much that I'm enjoying my "retirement there is one down side that constantly amazes me and if I'm honest worries me a little is that my brain is not as sharp as it used to be
this is down to the simple fact I'm not taxing it like I used to, you of course are right 52-8 is not 45 and I deserve to be punished for such a school boy error

Thanks Duke, good to know re the allowances, I did check after I posted this morning on Citizens info and realised I was wrong, not quite sure where I got the 400 from
In the 20 years I've been traveling with Mrs Cervelo we have never been stopped coming back into the country but oddly enough we were stopped in 2017 entering America with too many but he let us go eventually

Anyhow I think we've taken this thread off topic enough, anybody else want to suggest a retirement budget or more advise for the op ??
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
Of course if the customs folk see them and query the personal use aspect you might......
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…...simply show them recent blood test or certified spirometry results (and other first order indicators) and tell them that there's a whole pile more substantial evidence that can be compiled (or, unfortunately but not unsurprisingly, has already been compiled??) attesting to the addiction.

The other point that I'd make here is that there is an inverse correlation between income levels and/or educational attainment with smoking. I leave this last point for the smokers out there to reflect on!

[Apologies for staying off topic above but I have strong feelings on the subject and with reason! Apologies, well qualified apologies, for the tough love also. Sometimes a spade is a spade.]

Back on topic, I'm not sure if there is much point in giving a total budget figure for the reasons outlined by Elacs. However, I do see a lot of merit in doing a spreadsheet where expenditure is analysed so comparisons can be made to highlight variances, etc.
 
Here's a link to a thread on the UK money saving expert forum that asks a very similar question and now has nearly 70 pages of discussion. Different currency and cost of living will affect the calculations but the ideas are still the same.

It's not a bad way to approach saving for retirement if you can get a good handle on your expected costs in retirement. By knowing what you may need income wise, you are better able to target your savings to ensure a pension fund total amount that may be able to generate that income.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=2146737
 
WhiteCoat…….I still can't manage to make my specific theory and Micawber rhyme. They're both wolves that work better alone. Obviously, mine is more famous but the other could catch on and believe that its creator will be heard of in years to come. I think you're getting too, well, whitecoaty, about the tests for recognising a smoker - are there not more immediate visual clues?
 
Before he gave up, my Dad would bring thousands of cigarettes back; he was stopped once and the customs guy was fine with it.
 
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