Seven Steps to Prepare for the Cost of Holidays and Hobbies in Retirement - The Daily Telegraph, 10th September 2026

Jason Discusses How to Prepare Yourself for Retirement Expenditure - with Esther Shaw for The Daily Telegraph

The original article was published on telegraph.co.uk on 10th September 2026.

As part of our mission to empower as many people as possible to make better financial decisions, we have published below all the information Jason shared with them, so you get the maximum benefit from it (not just from what was published).

SUCCESS IS SUBJECTIVE

The beauty of retirement success is that it is completely subjective. All that’s important is what matters to you, not to your friends or colleagues or neighbours. Their definition of a successful retirement will be different to yours.

If you want to spend your retirement pottering around the garden and going for walks in the local countryside, as many people do, you’re going to need a lot less money than someone who expects to holiday in 5-star hotels.

You might not even want to retire! Instead, maybe it is financial independence that interests you - the emotional and psychological freedom you gain from knowing that everything you do in life, including work, is being done on your terms.

This might mean leaving your main job and moving into a part-time or freelance role, more like a glide-path rather than the hard-stop of a traditional retirement. Perhaps you’ll choose a vocation that will be more enjoyable, but less well paid.

As part of that retirement vision, think about whether you plan to downsize your property at some point during your retirement or whether you could, if you ended up spending more than you had anticipated, and needed to free up liquid money. Having an open mind to this might allow you to spend more earlier on, knowing that there is a back-up plan.

ARE YOU A SAVER OR A SPENDER?

It may be an obvious thing to say, but how much money you spend in retirement will be a function of how you spend your time in retirement. Some of your costs will most likely reduce (commuting costs for example) and others will probably increase (eating out and leisure activities perhaps).

If you are a spender by nature, you are unlikely to suddenly become a saver on the day you retire. Equally, if you have always been a saver, you may struggle to convince yourself to eat into the money you have built up.

HOW TO GET STARTED

Your best starting point is probably to look at your actual expenditure over the last couple of years, divide it into sensible categories and then make an honest judgement as to whether each category will increase, decrease or stay broadly the same.

A lot of people find it useful to split their expenditure into core expenditure and discretionary expenditure. Core expenditure might cover all your day-to-day bills as well as a basic holiday budget and is the base amount that you would need to spend year in, year out. You might decide to budget for a higher level of discretionary expenditure in the earlier years of retirement if you plan to do more travelling and exploring.

As part of that discretionary expenditure, you might also like to set aside a capital sum which is specifically there for travelling or other activities that you have deliberately left until your retirement. Particularly if you are a saver by nature, compartmentalising this money might be a good way of giving yourself permission to actually spend it!

Remember that both your core and discretionary expenditure are likely to increase each year due to inflation.

Don’t forget to budget for the many “one-off” expenditure items that are likely to arise over time such as replacement cars, repairs and improvements to your home and medical expenses.

The cost of residential and nursing home care could be one of your largest expenditure items in retirement. It’s the elephant in the retirement room.

The challenge is that you don’t know if you will need it, how long you might need it for and what intensity of care would be needed. For most, a worst-case scenario would be too large a sum to feel comfortable trying to build up separate savings for, particularly as it is something that they don’t want to happen.

You might take the view that if you can get your finances into a sound enough position to retire comfortably, including owning your home outright, then if care is needed capital could be released from your property at a future point, either through a downsize, outright sale or some form of equity release.

Your expenditure will change over time, so add in some contingency at outset, keep track of actual expenditure numbers and be prepared to review your budget upwards or downwards as circumstances change.

THE BENEFITS ARE MORE THAN JUST FINANCIAL

There are two benefits of trying to map out what your retirement might look like. One is to help you with your financial budgeting. The other is to help give you some structure to your typical days and weeks.

Plenty of people we speak with who have recently retired, particularly if that retirement was quite sudden, due to redundancy for example, can find themselves a bit “lost” and in some cases missing the structure, purpose and human contact that work gave them. Similarly, plenty of people who are still working say something along the lines of “I would quickly get bored if I wasn’t working”.

Without a clear vision of what a successful retirement looks like to you, it’s hard to see how you can plan to retire with the confidence that you will have enough money.

If you are in a couple, be honest with each other about what you both want out of your retirement and what role money is going to play in that. Take each other’s hopes and fears seriously and create a shared vision.

Ultimately, the more you can understand your own retirement ambitions, the more successful your retirement journey is likely to be.

GET IN TOUCH

If you would like to discuss any questions you have around planning for your retirement, or any other help you need to plan your own financial future, please call us for a free consultation on 020 3488 9505.

The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less

than you invested.

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