I was speaking with a client recently, and we were going through his plans for the future and he said to me, "I only need a grand a month when I retire, my mortgage will be paid, kids will have left, what will I need more than that for?"
You’ve got a Range Rover on your drive?
“I’ll get a cheaper car”
You live in a 4 bedroom house
“I’ll downsize”
You go on 4 holidays a year
“I don’t need to travel when I retire”
The amount of times I hear this is unbelievable so let's address it.
-
First things first, You’re full of 💩.
Studies show that most people need at least 60% of their salary an as income in retirement.
There's a thing called "lifestyle creep". Essentially, you get used to a certain lifestyle. You’ve become accustomed to nice restaurants, a nice steak and bottle of red with the Mrs. Exotic holidays every 3 months, golfing weekends with the lads.
You like to treat the kids? When you retire, chances are you’ll have grandkids you’ll want to spoil, and you think like a switch one day you can just turn all that off? come on.
The cost of running a car if you want to change it every few years is going to cost you more than £500 a month once you factor in petrol, tax, insurance, maintenance and the cost of replacing it. If you and the Mrs both want a car that’s your grand gone straight away!
What about your bills? What about Food? Socialising, holidays, clothing, emergencies, kids, grandkids, insurances?
Ask yourself this;
How much money do you spend on a working day, and how much money do you spend on a weekend? Where you have the whole day free? When do you spend more money? Now picture retirement, every single day is a weekend.
The first part of “retirement planning” is working out what a realistic income is, in todays money (forget inflation for a minute, we can factor that in after). but to put it in perspective if you need £3000 a month today, in 20/25 years time to have the same buying power you’d need almost double that.
Then you need to work out how much you need in a pot to generate you that income and then you need to work out how much you need to put away every single month, starting today.
Then, and this is the magic step, you need to do it.
Don’t put it off. Just. Do. It.
Thanks for Reading,
Comments