Although many people have already prepared a sum of money to cover their life after retirement they may worry if they’ll use up that money before time. That’s because some people don’t estimate retirement expenses so they’re uncertain how much money they’ll need per month to survive.
 

Apart from setting a financial plan, you should estimate retirement expenses including the financial backup plan for unexpected incidents. For example, your goal is to save 4 million baht, then you should prepare up to 4.5 million baht.
 

Estimating your expenses helps you realize whether your retirement will follow the direction as expected. Here are 3 levels for the quality of life after retirement.

1. Primary/Sufficient retirement

You’ll have enough money to spend per month on general expenses such as housing, food, utility bills, medical fee, etc.

2.Pleasurable retirement

The quality of your life after retirement is the same as your working age as expenses before and after retirement are not much different. Or, you’ll try to keep expenses after retirement not less than 70% of expenses before retirement.

3.Luxurious retirement

At this stage, you save money for retirement more than a pleasurable level. That means you need to save more money for special occasions during retirement such as travel, shopping, etc.
 

Estimating retirement expenses depends on your lifestyle. You do that by comparing monthly expenses at the moment and then adjust them to your lifestyle during retirement whether you want to live your life sufficiently, pleasurable, or luxuriously. You can study the lifestyle of those who have the same profession as the expenses don’t vary much.

Referring to research in 2016 “Money spent after retirement: How to save enough money”, conducted by the Department of Banking and Finance, Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, Chulalongkorn University, the survey was taken with Thai people from several professions nationwide. The finding is average monthly retirement expenses at the lowest sufficient and pleasurable level consist of agriculturists and labor workers at 8,153 and 9,193 baht, respectively. Average monthly retirement expenses at the lowest luxurious level include Industry workers at about 14,005 baht.

Whatever retirement lifestyle you are, there’re 5 major expenses to be concerned about.

1. Daily: Food, Household products

2. Housing: Water, Electricity, Phone, Internet, Repair

3. Travel: Public transportation, Gas, Toll fee, Car maintenance

4. Health: Medical fee, Supplement products, Life insurance premium, Health checkup

5. Recreation: Leisure, Travel, Party, Donation, Making merit

The next step is to manage financial activities by the following methods.

1. Prepare Personal Financial Statement (Assets – Debt = Net Wealth) to know and understand your financial status which is the beginning of financial management for retirement.

2.Prepare Income and Expense Statement (Income – Expenses = Excess money or Lack of money) to monitor your financial behavior. It’s better to record income and expenses as their important information. In case there’s any problem, you can adjust your spending behavior right away.

To prevent carelessness, you should estimate your expenses higher than usual because you never know how high the cost of living will be in the future. Be well-prepared and follow the steps of estimating your retirement expenses to ensure that you can spend your money in line with your lifestyle during retirement.