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How much will you need?

It’s a good idea to think about what you’ll need to spend in retirement and it helps to create a goal to work towards. It’s not just about adding up your day-to-day expenses, you’ll need to give some thought to how you’ll spend your time in retirement and what that could cost.

Can you picture your future?

Our ‘Retirement Living Standards’ tool helps you understand how much you’ll need to live on in retirement. Based on the retirement living standards from the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), it helps you work out what your retirement might cost based on three lifestyles and allows you to tailor your living costs to your own needs.

Use our RLS tool

What are the PLSA’s retirement living standards?

The guidance describes three different standards of living: minimum, moderate and comfortable. They provide you with information about the costs in retirement and cover everyday living expenses and lifestyle choices such as your home, food and drink, transport, holidays and leisure and helping others like buying birthday presents.

Are you on track to reach your goal?

Once you have an idea of the amount you might need in retirement, you might want to make a note of it and head over to our retirement planner. You can use the number you get from this tool to give you a good starting point for your retirement income goal. 

You can also input details of other pensions you might have, and see how increasing your contributions, even if it’s only a little bit more, could help you to afford the lifestyle you want in retirement.

As things change, you can come back here and run the numbers again to keep on top of your goals and to add or remove some of the things you think you might need to pay for in retirement.