How much is enough? Working out your retirement number

'How much do I need to retire?' is one of the most common financial questions, and one of the hardest to answer with a single figure - because it depends entirely on the life you want to lead. But there are useful frameworks that turn a vague worry into something you can actually plan around.

The right starting point is not a pot size but a lifestyle. What will your typical week look like? Will the mortgage be paid off? How much travel, how many hobbies, how much helping the family? Retirement spending often follows a pattern - busier and more expensive in the early, active years, quieter in the middle, then potentially rising again if care is needed later. Sketching your intended lifestyle gives you a target income to aim for, which is far more useful than a generic figure.

The Retirement Living Standards, published by the pensions industry, describe three levels of retirement lifestyle - minimum, moderate and comfortable - and attach estimated annual expenditure figures to each. As a rough guide, the minimum standard is currently around £13,900 a year for a single person and £22,500 for a couple, with the moderate and comfortable levels stepping up considerably. The figures exclude rent and mortgage costs. They are spending benchmarks rather than gross-income targets, so a higher gross pension income may be needed where withdrawals are taxable. Treat them as a reference point rather than a personal answer.

Almost everyone's plan starts with the State Pension. The full new State Pension is £241.30 a week in 2026/27 - around £12,547 a year. That is a meaningful, inflation-protected base, but on its own it sits close to the minimum standard and below a moderate lifestyle for most people. The gap between the State Pension and the life you want is, in essence, what your own savings and pensions need to fill.

Once you know the income you want and subtract the State Pension (and any defined benefit pensions), you are left with the income your own savings must generate. There are various rules of thumb for how big a pot that requires, but they all involve assumptions about investment returns, how long you will live, and how much risk you are comfortable taking in drawing the money down. This is exactly where cashflow planning earns its keep, because it lets you test your number against realistic - and cautious - assumptions rather than hope.

Whatever your number, the earlier you engage with it, the easier it is to reach. Small increases in contributions, sustained over many years, compound into large differences at the end. And even close to retirement, understanding your number lets you make deliberate choices - working a little longer, adjusting the lifestyle, or phasing the transition - rather than being taken by surprise.

We translate the retirement you want into a realistic target, test it against cautious assumptions, and map the route to get there.