Pensions Council: "€33k a year pension needed for 'comfortable' retirement"

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ClubMan

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€33k a year pension needed for 'comfortable' retirement

A single person would need a pension of €33,600 a year, and a couple would need €43,200 a year, in order to have a "comfortable" retirement.
www.rte.ie
 
So subjective as to be meaningless. I’d be interested to know the pensions of those in KPMG and the Pensions council, somehow I doubt it’s a “modest” 20K or a “majestic” 33 K.

Modest, moderate, comfortable. What word do they use first the state pension I wonder. Paltry to their opening “modest” I guess. No definition of the KPMG pension.

Interestingly from a personal view that “modest” is my husbands foreign state pension.

People should be encouraged to save for retirement. Sadly that article is lacking in encouragement.
 
How does RTE have the report then?

@ClubMan you didn't make an actual post or have a question?
 
I kind of broadly agree with the figures but it is very subjective to the individual or couple
If its of any help, I'll be doing a post in January of my 20 years of tracked spending from '05.
And though you can't fully rely on your past spending to fully predict your future spending
it is of great comfort to me to know where the savings can be found should they need to be!
 
Those figures align with my own estimate of my retirement needs based on my current expenditure (including health insurance for the entire family).

But the RTE report is very clear that these numbers will vary according to personal circumstances.

It's also pretty clear that the state pension won't cover much at all past the basics. And for many people they'll struggle on it even for the basics.
 
That also seems to me somewhat realistic as I estimate our yearly spending at 55k net as a family of 4 (a young adult and a teenager) including a budget of 10k + in travel and children probably costing upward of 1-1.2K a month. That's once the mortgage is paid.
 

Being confronted with "small", "medium" and "large" when shopping must be a nightmare!
 
It's like a carbon copy of the UK guidance but their figures were in Stg and they have NHS plus no vrt on vehicles. Seems suspect to me. I find the comfortable figure to be surprisingly low but then again maybe I feel like that because figures above that are taxed so hard you can barely tell the difference in your pocket!
 
Sarenco said:
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Well found, I think the comfortable definition is pretty accurate and more useful than the UK comparison they gave. You could quibble about whether they need to have saving included monthly, but I guess it’s part of the allowing multiple holidays spaced through year.
 

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Bronte said:
How does RTE have the report then?

@ClubMan you didn't make an actual post or have a question?
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All these reports are given to media before release, without the media coverage nobody reads them. The correct approach is to have the reports front page of your own site with a splash and some reaction quotes given to media also, which public bodies are quite bad at, as in this case, but at least the report was findable.
 
JoeRoberts said:
But these numbers are above what a lot of people live on before retirement so doesn't make sense really
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Judging by many posts and many Money Makeovers on Askaboutmoney quite a number of people seem to have no clue what amount of money they live on and have no idea what their overall and categorised expenditure is.

Seems to me that a report like this one that attempts to estimate figures for common general cases isn't a bad idea to focus minds. Much better than aimlessly saving through a pension with little or no idea what one is aiming for or needing to achieve in the end. Or some vague rule of thumb like "you'll need 50% of your final earnings or else you're going to starve in retirement".

Obviously specific individuals/couples would need to analyse their own expenditure and lifestyle to see what they might need for their specific circumstances. But the report lays down some general figures as a guideline which is no bad thing in my opinion.

A bit like the ISI Reasonable Living Expenses calculator and guides do in a different context.

For what it's worth the report's figures roughly align with my own personal budgeted figures for bare minimum to "more comfortable" expenditure levels.
 
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jimmij said:
For say a 'comfortable' 33k a year for a single person, I think it's worth highlighting that this refers to the pension with tax already deducted.
Your actual pension would want to be €38k or so to give you that.
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Just to note that the "modest" and "moderate" cases would likely involve figures that are basically or actually exempt from income tax and USC (no PRSI after 66?).
 
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