Dear LPG,

I think that we all have too much time to think these days and, after the usual self-discussions that form our individual assessments of what is going on in the world at the moment, something came up.  During a video chat with a group of friends, we got to talking about the very subjective attitude that we all have to a commodity that we have in differing amounts. I am talking about money.

Our discussion did not really have many surprises, and the five of us did the usual thing which is to all agree that we are quite poor and root the evidence that allowed us all to come to that conclusion in comparisons that we made when looking at facets of each other’s lives.

We five, relatively old girls, have made a habit of getting together online a couple of times a week since doing it physically became inadvisable, and it has kept us close and given us all something to look forward to although we are at different stages of retirement and have varied lifestyles. Out of the five of us, two decided that the other three must be rich because they had cars, while according to the other three, the two of us that owned our own homes outright had to be better off than the others because they had no rent or mortgage worries. One mentioned that another was lucky because they had inherited their home from parents, while a discussion about how many holidays we take each year was also used as a measurement of wealth. Only one is married and the other four felt that she was better off citing that age old saying that ‘two can live as cheaply as one’, but then the two who live with family got the single ones agreeing that they had to be better off financially,   predictably it all got quite complicated.

While I know that any discussion on the subject of personal income is likely to be missing one element, and, during this particular conversation, I was just as guilty as all the others. The one thing that was never actually discussed was exactly how much disposable income we live on each week, which is probably the most fundamental measure of all.

It is not the first time that I have been part of a group of people discussing who is the worst off and, even though our chat was fairly light-hearted, it got me thinking that we were all trying to prove to the others that we were reasonably hard-done-by by the system and our circumstances.   On reflection I was left wondering about just what the average pensioner lives on these days.

It is a question that I have no doubt takes up a fair amount of time in the minds of many pensioners, in these times when we have so much more time to stop and think about it.  My pondering took me to the internet where, not surprisingly I did not find a definitive answer, but I came across two rather interesting websites which went some way to getting to the nub of the problem.

 I hope sharing them may colour your answer a little more accurately so that you are better prepared the next time you find yourself talking about it…

FL, Bellingham.

FL thought that the paragraph on this website which is entitled ‘Can I live comfortably on the average retirement income in 2020’ held some of the answers…

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… this look at regional differences also caught her eye…

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