Annual cost of being a pensioner in the UK jumps £800
Pensioners now need £215 a week to cope with everyday costs.
The annual cost of being a pensioner in the UK has risen to £11,200 in 2015, up more than £800 from £10,387 last year, according to analysis by Key Retirement.
The figure comes from adding up everyday spends including food, clothes, travel and heating.
Pensioners in the UK now need around £215 a week to cover these basic costs, up from £200 compared to last year.
But there are big variations at a regional level as the table below shows.
|
Region |
Annual cost 2015 |
Weekly cost 2015 |
Annual cost 2014 |
Weekly cost 2014 |
|
South East |
£13,216 |
£254 |
£11,945 |
£230 |
|
London |
£12,992 |
£250 |
£11,322 |
£218 |
|
East of England |
£11,760 |
£226 |
£11,144 |
£214 |
|
South West |
£11,648 |
£224 |
£10,906 |
£210 |
|
Northern Ireland |
£10,976 |
£211 |
£10,179 |
£196 |
|
East Midlands |
£10,523 |
£202 |
£9,971 |
£192 |
|
North West |
£10,343 |
£199 |
£9,764 |
£188 |
|
West Midlands |
£10,270 |
£198 |
£9,348 |
£180 |
|
Scotland |
£10,080 |
£194 |
£10,075 |
£194 |
|
Wales |
£9,856 |
£190 |
£8,829 |
£170 |
|
Yorkshire & Humberside |
£9,744 |
£187 |
£9,348 |
£180 |
|
North East |
£9,630 |
£185 |
£9,348 |
£180 |
|
UK |
£11,200 |
£215 |
£10,387 |
£200 |
Source: Key Retirement
As you can see pensioners in the North East will need £9,630 a year to live compared to £13,216 in the South East – around 37% less.
Key Retirement’s analysis found the average retired household spends around 15% of their budget on fuel and housing, the equivalent of £1,680 over 12 months.
Meanwhile a 14% share is spent on food and non-alcoholic drinks, which amounts to £1,568 a year while transport costs take an 11% chunk, which equates to £1,232 annually.
How much are you worth? Get a snapshot with Plans
State Pension not enough to live on
Key Retirement warned those approaching retirement to plan carefully and maximise income to ensure they have enough money to fund the typical cost of living as a pensioner.
It says the current State Pension (£113.10 a week or £5,881.20 a year) and even the new State Pension (£148.40 a week or £7,716.80 a year) planned for April 2016 will not cover the basic costs of being retired in any region of the UK.
What is the annual cost going to be for you?
The Key Retirement figures paint a broad picture about what it will cost to be a pensioner in the UK.
Read How to work out how much you need to save for retirement to understand what you will need in retirement for a comfortable lifestyle.
You can also use the lovemoney.com Plans tool to help you understand your current wealth and what you need to do to ensure a better retirement.
More on pensions and retirement:
Pension Tracing Service to triple in size
Free State Pension statement now available to over-55s
How to avoid the 55% pension lifetime allowance savings trap
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Comments
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I have to agree with the chap in the south east.I live in the east midlands but find that my costs are no higher overall than last year and in fact are cheaper as energy is coming down with my new contract and petrol has reduced by over 20 p per litre. Airfares are only never getting lower so our trips to the US to see our son cost more every year but I suppose they do not count. A lot depends on how you live and like the guy earlier I spend so little on clothes and little on technology that it does not matter. I would like to see the breakdown of these reputed cost increases.
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Finally a report that is accurate! We have only today been trying to convince a debt management company how much living costs are a week and they said it was too much and ridiculous. You have confirmed that we are spending just what every other pensioner has to. Thanks for proving we are right!
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This looks like another of those surveys designed to encourage the market for the services the people behind the survey offer. Here I am in the south east, the most expensive area to be a pensioner according to the survey, which claims that life will cost me nearly £1300 more this year than last. Seems pretty unlikely. My fuel bills are the same - my supplier has not increased what it charges - and many people will now have lower fuel prices than they did a year ago. My free bus pass is the same. There is some increase in Council Tax, but not much. Many food prices have gone down. I'm not sure about my water bill. My car insurance renewal letter came today and that's slightly down on last year. I don't buy very much clothing, but if I found that prices had increase by more than 10% I could always look for something cheaper - I'm not compelled to buy my clothes from the same price band in the same retailer every year. Really, without much more info about how the figures are compiled, the survey remains firmly in the not-to-be -believed category.
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25 February 2015