The Retirement Newsletter: How much?

Issue Number: -2 — An alarming jump in the cost of retirement

Photo by Author — This photo is of the Pinnacles Desert, Nambung National Park, Cervantes, WA 6511, Australia, and it has nothing to do with the newsletter’s subject — it is here to calm me down!

Welcome

Welcome to issue -2.

This week, I am looking at what appears to be an alarming jump in the cost of retirement.

The cost of retirement

OK, first off, I want to say that I am not a financial advisor. I am writing about what I have read over the years about money and preparing to retire. This is not financial advice.

Recently, I came across a report at Retirement Living Standards with some quite startling numbers for the cost of retirement.

I’ve written about the cost of retirement quite a bit, and the last time was in issue -24 — Another pension and retirement wobble — where I was worrying about my pension income and what sort of lifestyle I would have in retirement.

If you have followed my newsletters for some time, you will know I have three definitions of retirement lifestyles. I took these definitions from an original article in Which? in May 2021 — How much will you need to retire?.

The three levels of retirement are:

• Essential — the least amount of money you need to survive. To live and get by. Admittedly, it’s not the…