The 2 most common questions I’m asked as a financial planner are how much money do I need to retire? Or how much income will I need to live on in retirement?

Obviously the questions are related, the higher the income needed the higher the required retirement savings.

The required income is so wide ranging that clients request to “ball park it” are impossible. In the same week a few years ago, this could not have been demonstrated to me more clearly, early in the week I saw a client who had been living on $200 a week, she wasn’t well structured and wasn’t receiving much Centrelink assistance, after restructuring her situation, the minimum income she could receive was about $450 a week. She was mortified and felt she would waste all that extra money. A few days later a second client was trying to reduce his ongoing income requirement to $200,000pa, most clients fall somewhere in between.

There are number of calculations that are used as guidelines of income in requirement, ASFA have standards for what they consider modest and Comfortable retirements, very subjective terms, however they do elaborate some details of what sconstituites but modest and comfortable

Many clients walk in the door knowing that they are approaching retirement and would like advice in relation to do it, but many haven’t thought about what they actually want in retirement, let alone how much that will cost. A good planner will walk you through what you would like to do, do you want to go on holidays? How often? Where to? What hobbies do you plan to take up or do more of?

A good planner will help identify what the basics/necessities will cost