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How much money per week do you need to live on?

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tech/a said:
Dont forget inflation it will be a killer to most who think they have "enough"

Passive income/s is/are a must.
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That's right. In planning for my retirement I factor in 3% inflation. If I estimate a portfolio with a conservative mix of investments (industry super balanced fund, direct shareholdings, property, some cash) will return 7%, I see this as a real return of 4%.

I'm aiming at a min of $80,000/yr for my wife and I to live on so we need 80,000/.04 = $2,000,000 portfolio for retirement. This would keep up with inflation and we wouldn't be drawing down on it, so no danger of outliving it. If something unexpected happened, we would have the fallback of being able to draw down. Otherwise it would eventually be a decent inheritance for the kids.
 
Prawn, a couple of things which seem to be missing (or perhaps which you have considered and decided you don't need) are:

No loss of earnings insurance: how would you get on if either of you have a catastrophic illness or accident and are unable to work?

No savings plan for buying a house: should we therefore assume you intend to rent all your life?

No contents insurance: do you have nothing you consider valuable enough to insure, i.e. if there were to be a fire and you lost the lot, are you happy to buy it all again from new?

No private health cover: either you trust the public system 100% or believe you will never get sick/need an operation etc.
Also, isn't the taking out of private cover mandatory over a certain salary level?
 
Most are assuming there will be no depression, house prices tanking or bank failures.
What if it does happen are you watching the markets and have a bail out plan???
 
Julia said:
For this thread, I've just added up what I spent last FY and it was about $35,000.
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Thanks for taking the time, seems about average, cheers.


Yeah thanks sptrawler, it seems that most people fall into this 30K to 52K modest to comfortable group. There is one other group around and they are the ones with no children or anyone else they would like to leave their money to. This group can virtually draw down all their capital until they pass out of this world. They can actually spend a bit more as capital protection isn't such a big concern to them, cheers.
 
To everyone questioning my expenses in this thread:

The opening post asked us to assume that we own our house outright with no other debt

Someone then questioned my expenses/bills so i gave a breakdown of what they are at the moment. I'm not discussing my personal circumstance, im simply replying to the question/scenario in the opening post
 
Assuming no rent - I currently live off $300 a week no problem.

But how much do i need? I think i could live off $150 a week (probably $250 at 60+)

Haveing recently finished Uni I was living off $200 week, including $100 rent. Was pretty difficult and can be rather depressing, but one learns quickly when they have to.

That being said, I have no intention to live off the age pension. I'd like a minimum of 40k p.a for a comfortable lifestyle, but like most plan to have much more.
 
Hi Bill
Circumstances sound similar and I actually read that same article. I guess I'm looking at a pretty modest future with a target of $40k per annum. I also did my own spreadsheet a couple of years ago (based on real outgoings now that the kids have left the nest) and it came out at $35k which included a modest car changeover every 5 years or so (probably won't be driving as much) and also an allowance for an overseas holiday (probably visiting friends and rellies in UK and NZ, so no accommodation costs) every 3 years, with local holidays in between.
Sadly my super is only going to be around $500k after I complete the downsizing exercise I am currently in the middle of, but 8% of $500k is $40k so the numbers almost work!
I honestly haven't asked all those "what ifs" because there isn't much I can do about them in most cases. Just being conservative in retirement as I have been in life and glad to have good health to enjoy whatever I've got.
Thanks for starting the thread, it's useful to get other people's points of view and circumstances (I envy quite a few of them and wish them well)
Cheers
 
Fair enough, Prawn. My apologies if anything I said seemed intrusive.
It's just pretty important to understand that simply owning a house and having no debt does not translate to no ongoing expenses on that house.
 
Horses for courses - when you need to scrape dollars together you learn to live with the minimum - if you're splashed for cash then you are going to head up a pretty lavish lifestyle.

Comfortable - I'd estimate about 100k a year. Comfortable to me would be living large - it's not living normal.
 
Originally Posted by pixel
"Comfortable" at $1000 a week? Including regular travels? They've got to be joking!
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YOU HAVE GOT TO BE JOKING!

You can't live off $1000 a week, even including travel?!

I spent 4 months in USA and only spent 10k. That included tour bookings (3k) theme parks, NASA, 1 week in Orlando, 1 week in Miami (1k) a tattoo (1.5k) and the rest was drinking and having fun.
 

Greg I would say you have done pretty well there are a lot of people I know that are not going to have anywhere near $500k plus their house. Don't forget if you are a married couple you qualify for part pension at about $800k. So mate after the g.f.c your looking good.
I feel sorry for those that don't own a house and Labor has cut back what they can put into super and also lifted the age for them to obtain a pension, because we can't afford it. Then in the same breath say we are in a boom.
 
To survive you would only need $50 a week. That would pay for food and a warm blanket.

Anything above that figure is simply to cater for our luxuries.

We are a greedy lot nowadays.
 
What about the fine for vagrancy.
Cheapest high carb food is Macas or Hungry Jacks, $5 per burger two a day to survive winter cold = $70. So $50 a week would be cutting it pretty fine, it could probably be done but over a 12 to 24 month period I think you would end up in hospital. Maybe a bit of petty crime might see you over the lean periods but can be problematic. $50 a week is an option living on the beach in Asia.
 
Get arrested and go to a low security farm were you can grow food and sell a bit over the fence to the unlucky ones.
Only danger it the depression the fed's might let you out early to save costs.
 

Hi Greg, I agree with sptrawler, he said what I was going to say. That is that if you are married the part pension could kick in and bring you up to that amount, but then again you could be single or not at age 65 yet. In any case thanks for your post, that 35K to 40K mark seems to come up a lot.
 
easylikesunday said:
To survive you would only need $50 a week. That would pay for food and a warm blanket.

Anything above that figure is simply to cater for our luxuries.

We are a greedy lot nowadays.
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Yes you probably could but you would have to be somewhere totally free of bills. A friend, family or a cave? I knew some homeless men around Manly who lived in caves on the cliff faces on North Head, others lived in bus shelters. There was also the guy who lived in the side of the wall of one of the buildings it was a fire hydrant. He just pulled a piece of cardboard over the front at night......... what a horrible life.
 

I did a little budget of what we spend in an ordinary suburb per week. I put in all our running costs for the house, insurances etc and the running costs of the car. I also allowed for half a tank of petrol. It includes an RSL lunch a week, a take away and my alcohol. We do not do any expensive sports like golf, skydiving etc. We do not have health insurance so you must add that in if you do. My wife and I live comfortably on $400 P/W. Every other bit of income such as in the above case $600 P/W would go into savings. Times that by 52 weeks gives you 32K which can be spent on holidays, so yes I think 52K a year is very comfortable and you can do a reasonable amount of travel.

What we are well aware of is that most of the time you do spend it living at home. The 8 or 10 Months at home living well but simply allows us to save the surplus and do our holidays. When we are overseas we do all our dental work and buy our clothes there, we save money by buying overseas. I have bought enough Billabong T Shirts at $5 each and jeans at $20 each to last me years, my wife is the same. We prefer the overseas bargains. I kind of use our trips not only for the holiday but to do/buy the things we need too. I look at living at home as money going in the bank for the next trip.
 
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