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Sunshine Cash

Creating a Champagne Life on a Beer Budget

Archives for November 2017

How much money do you need to retire?

Quite some time ago I read a news report debating whether or not the Australian aged pension is “enough” to live on in today’s economy.

As expected, the comments were mixed with a lot of people saying they can NOT live on the amount received from the government.

(I must admit, I do find it amazing when I see these types of reports where we see a woman complaining that she does not have enough money for electricity to keep warm, but she is being interviewed in a thin cotton top. – Put a jumper on!!)

Both my parents and my in-laws are retired, and I have seen them live a happy and activity filled retirement over the last 15-20 years.  They are not having any trouble at all living successfully on the pension.  My parents are  in between the “modest” and “comfortable” category and just simply cannot spend it all.   In-laws are on the aged pension only and live as well as we do, if not more socially.  My Father recently passed away and Mum is now on a single pension with a small superannuation top up, and still, the bank account keeps rising.

The number one thing I have noticed that has led to living comfortably on the pension is to own the roof over your head.  Most reports show that housing is the number one cost of retirees.  Retiring with no debt, a small nest egg and a low maintenance home has shown itself to be a huge benefit to both sets of parents.

Also, retirement is not all about how much money you have.  How many of us “young’uns” just wish for time to do what we want.  Retirees will often say, they don’t know how they had time to work. Gardening, craft, reading a good book or magazine are things that often get somewhat neglected in the hustle and bustle of a busy working life.

This table proposes the amounts supposedly needed for varying levels of retirement.

http://www.superguru.com.au/retiring/how-much-super-will-i-need

One  thing that the “gurus” neglect to think of is peer groups.
If retirees are surrounded by other high income retirees who travel overseas often then yes, they may need a much higher figure.

My parents were in a caravan club so they travelled quite extensively. They are not interested in international travel (apart from NZ where we have some family – does NZ even count as international???)

The in-laws love train travel and have done the Spirit of the Outback few times  We looked at doing the Outback with them one trip but without the pensioner discount it is REALLY expensive.

Both parents eat out ALL THE TIME. We regularly get answering machine because they are out to dinner. Usually clubs , but certainly not restricted to the “seniors specials” , because that is what they like to eat.  None of them are into “towers of no food” as my Dad called “better” restaurants.
Both Mothers have overflowing pantries that we joke will feed us for years when we eventually have to clean out the houses.  Regular catch ups with friends over a new cake or biscuit recipe and a cuppa are commonplace.

Both parents have always had late model cars that are regularly maintained.  Because of the van, Dad had a fairly new 4×4 since his passing this has been sold, Mum does not drive so that  vehicle expense is now partly taken up with community bus fares.   The in-laws have not long upgraded their car to a late model small 4cyl Toyota.

All drink bottled wine, bought beer, spirits, sherry and port.

Clothes, the men are men and don’t really care . The Mums just buy clothes and they wear them. The Mothers are both well dressed from Rockmans, Millers, Noni B etc so Reasonable clothes. (Although neither woman was a “designer clothes” wearer)

All get their hair cut at local hairdressers and look neat and tidy at all times.

As mentioned previously, they have active social lives filled with leisure activities.  Cinema outings, meals with friends and craft group outings feature regularly on the calendar.

Houses are both fully owned, modern homes that are standard 4/2/2 and are in good condition. Neither house will need new kitchens or bathrooms in their lifetime.

Neither have health insurance and have not needed it. There has been some serious illness (1 cancer, 2 diabetics, 1 aortic aneurism op) and of course all have glasses. The public system has been FANTASTIC and none of us can complain about the quality or timeliness of treatment.  In the last year of Dad’s life, he had multiple trips to hospital and weekly visits to his GP, all in the public system.  Nothing could have been done any differently in the Private system to make his last year any different.

Watching our parents age has been a wonderful learning experience for my husband and I.  We are not worried about our level of comfort in retirement at all.  We are working on setting ourselves up now, and look forward to our golden years.

 

 

 

A Different Advent Calendar.

My daughter-in-law does enjoy a nice cup of tea 🙂

I came up with the idea of making an Advent Calendar with various types of teabag for her this year.

I had done a tea wrapper for my Mum for Mother’s Day a couple of years ago, so I had a template for teabag envelopes on my computer.

It took me a while to play around with Photoshop and create 25 different envelopes, but I got there in  the end

 

 

You can download the instructions here
Freebies are HERE

 

Here is how I made the board

Step 1:
Print the 25 teabag envelopes and cut them out carefully. Each little envelope has the date (1-25) and a cute “Tea Quote”

Step 2:
Cut out the matching tags that will be stapled to the teabag. I stapled on one side only so the type of tea is able to be read.

Step 3:
Fold the envelopes and secure with a little craft peg.  For my calendar, I will be displaying the large number to the outside, so each day the quote is revealed.

Here is the step by step pictures of how I did this.

Step 4:
Make a pretty board to display the envelopes.   I bought a corkboard from the discount store and decided to cover it with Christmas-y foil.  I chose foil as I thought it would stand up to craft glue better than thin paper.

Trimming the foil proved to be a little tricky, as it had a tendency to want to rip rather than cut.  I had a nice fresh blade in my knife, but perhaps a craft scalpel might have worked better.   To cover the few tears, I edged the board with glittery silver tape.  I am pleased with the result.

 

Step 5:
Lay out the envelopes to get a rough idea of spacing.  Once you are happy with where each envelope goes, glue the pegs to the board with a good glue. ( I used super glue)

And there you have it.. 🙂  One cute Advent Calendar with a variety of teas and a different quote each day in the lead up to Christmas Day on the 25th.

 

You can download the envelopes and tags from my free resources page

Freebies are HERE

Saving Money AND the Planet.

I must admit I like to read  but  I rarely make myself enough time to get lost in a novel 🙁

I do, however, enjoy a magazine regularly.

Over the course of the years, family members have gifted me subscriptions to magazines, such as Better Homes and Gardens, Gourmet Traveller, Women’s Weekly and a few recipe/food magazines.  Once the subscription was over, sometimes I continued it myself, or just bought the magazine from the supermarket.

One day it dawned on me that magazines are EXPENSIVE!! and are probably not very environmentally friendly with all that gloss paper, toxic inks and disposal after a very short time.

I found that our library had a good range of magazines, but they were often months behind, even the digital versions were sometimes 2 or 3 months behind the current issue 🙁

I did subscribe to some of my favourites with iSubscribe. For a while this was a good option that saw current editions land on my iPad regularly.  While there are good savings to be made, it is still a luxury.

Toady my reading prayers have been answered!!   Groupon have a fantastic deal that will see me with as many digital magazines as I can possibly digest in one year for just $29.99

I had not heard of this company, Magzter, before but I am super impressed with the range of titles, there are 1000’s of them.

I have signed up, downloaded the app to my ipad and might spend the rest of the weekend, “flipping” through magazines.

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