If you are still renting a house in your fifties you have a bit of a problem. With less than twenty years to go before you can officially draw on your pension you are left with the need to spend the next few years building up enough cash to not only buy a house but to boost your pension income up to the point where you can afford to live.
Summary of this article.If you’re over 50 and still renting, it’s crucial to start planning now. With less than two decades to boost your savings and secure retirement income, you need an actionable financial strategy to cover housing and living costs comfortably.
Plan, Don’t Hope: Without a plan, pensioner poverty could be a real risk. Set a retirement target, even if it isn’t perfect, as it will offer more security than hoping things will work out. Proactive planning is essential for avoiding financial hardship later.
Increase Savings and Income: Prioritize ways to increase your income and savings. Leverage your current earnings as much as possible—this approach, often shared with younger clients, can still work for you even if options like multiple jobs are limited.
Consider Housing Needs: Planning for housing security is vital. Whether you aim to buy a property (requiring around £200,000 in most UK areas) or explore mortgages that accept pension income, planning for future housing costs will reduce your reliance on renting.
State and Private Pensions: Calculate your expected state pension (around £130 weekly) and any private pensions. To maintain a stable rent budget, your pension fund may need to reach at least £100k. Start by getting a state pension forecast and reviewing all private pensions.
Reduce Debt and Manage Expenses: Review debts and ongoing expenses. Reducing financial obligations now will free up funds for savings, making your money work harder as you approach retirement.
Boosting your income to the point of making sure you have enough to save is a start, and then working on getting as much leverage for your money as you can – the same things I talk to my twenty and thirty-somethings about – only they do have a bit more time on their side and can, of course, work two jobs – something that is hard when you are that little bit older.
This is a problem that many are facing, yet the solutions seem far and few.
Looking forward the size of the problem is massive both for individuals and the state. Personally, in order to earn enough to cover rent you’ll need at least a grand of monthly of pension income, to get that you’ll need a pension fund of at least £100k – making an assumption of you living until you are 79 or so and drawing on the fund from age 78 onwards
You will, of course, qualify for your State Pension which is likely to be in the region of £130 per week or just under £7k per year. On this basis, provided you can live on £7k and with your other pension income covering your rent you may just make it. |However pensioner poverty looks likely to be a real thing.
Your other alternative is to work out how best to find £200k on average across the UK to purchase somewhere to live, pay cash for it. Or to find a mortgage lender that will loan money to you based on your pension income. Both of which are going to be harder than you think.
Provided you are over fifty now, there are some things you need to do urgently.
Go get yourself a pension forecast re your state pension – this can be done online, get details of all of your pensions and review these urgently in order to work out how much these are likely to be worth.
Take careful note of any debt you may have, any future liabilities that are building up and to take note of all your expenses to see if any of these can be managed downwards. From there you will need to make sure that whatever cash you do have is looked after as the valuable resource it is. It will need to be working very hard for you over the coming months and years.
Of course, you may not get to the final figure you need, to the final endpoint that is perfect, but you will end up somewhere better with my plan for you than not having one at all.
It will not be financially feasible for you to just hope that things pan out, hope that it makes sense. If you are over fifty and still renting a property you have a problem looming – hoping it will go away will just not work out well.
Hope is not a plan – a plan is a plan. Once you have one, it just needs to be worked.
If you need some one on help on this, get in touch. Contact Richard