What would your ideal retirement week cost?

Start with a Wednesday

Most of us can picture the big retirement trip. Three weeks in Italy. A campervan. Finally visiting the family in Australia.

An ordinary Wednesday can be harder. What time would you get up? Who would you see? Would you want to work a little, learn something, look after a grandchild or just have a morning to yourself?

That is where I would start. Big trips can be an exciting part of retirement, but the weeks between them make up most of your life.

Write down three things you would like more of and one thing you would happily stop doing. Be specific. “More freedom” is difficult to price. “A midweek walk and lunch with friends” is much easier.

You do not need to fill every square. A diary with room in it can be part of the point.

Helen and Mark put their week on paper

Helen and Mark are both 60 and live in a mortgage-free home in Yorkshire. Helen has already retired. Mark works five days a week and is wondering whether to stop, reduce his hours or stay for one more year.

They want walks, a bit of gardening, time with family, a weekly class and lunch out occasionally. They also want £4,800 a year for holidays and visits. They are not planning to spend every day on a sun lounger.

This is their first sketch. Helen and Mark don’t have expensive tastes. They enjoy the simple things and put their money towards having the freedom to follow their passions.

The £60 is their combined weekly allowance for the pleasures shown here. It is not £60 each, and it does not include groceries, household bills or their annual travel budget. A free activity can still involve transport or equipment, so those costs need a home in the budget too.

If you are planning as a couple, make your first lists separately. Then compare them. You might both want more time, but have very different ideas about how to use it.

And if you are planning on your own, build in the people and places you want to see. A budget that covers the bills but leaves you isolated has missed something important.

Try it with your own life: use the Single vs Couple Retirement Spending Calculator to turn the sketch into household spending. Start with your current bills and change the items that will actually change when work does.

Give every pound a job

Helen and Mark split their spending into four parts. That makes the budget easier to understand and easier to change.

Their essentials are £1,800 a month. Their weekly pleasures cost £60. Holidays sit in their own annual pot. They also put money aside for the costs that don’t come round every month, like a new boiler, car repairs or a replacement sofa.

Their total is £32,400 a year after tax, or £2,700 a month. That is about £623 a week when everything is spread across the year.

Your essentials might look different. You might still be paying rent or a mortgage, supporting a relative, or covering costs linked to a disability. Build your budget around your own life, because copying someone else’s figures can make your retirement look cheaper or more expensive than it really is.

Check the costs that disappear, and those that arrive

Look at twelve months of statements. Pick out the commuting, parking, work lunches and professional costs that could go. Then add the costs of being at home more and doing the things you are looking forward to.

Watch out for costs that overlap. If a £40 lunch out replaces food you’d have bought anyway, you don’t need to add the full £40 on top of your normal food budget. In the same way, losing the commute doesn’t mean your transport costs disappear completely.

The £2,880 for irregular bills is a yearly average. In real life the car and the boiler might both go in the same year. Keep a separate emergency fund on top of this, and check how your plan copes if a big bill comes early.

Keep the enjoyable bits visible

When a budget needs trimming, it is tempting to cross out the holidays and lunches first because the numbers are easy to spot.

Try asking which spending gives you the most back. A £15 class you look forward to all week might earn its place more than a subscription you barely use. A good retirement isn’t just about keeping the bills paid. It needs things you look forward to as well.

Now put the income on a calendar

A budget tells you what retirement will cost. The next step is working out how you’ll pay for it.

Helen and Mark have £45,000 in cash, £165,000 in ISAs and £390,000 in defined contribution pensions. That’s £600,000 in total, not counting their home, with £210,000 of it in cash and ISAs. The pension figures are before any tax they’ll pay when they take money out.

Mark also has a £6,000-a-year defined benefit pension starting at 65. To keep the example simple, we’ve assumed they each get £12,000 a year in State Pension from 67. That’s a little under the full new State Pension, which is £241.30 a week (about £12,550 a year) in 2026/27, and what you get depends on your own National Insurance record.

Between 60 and 65, stopping work would mean finding the full £32,400 annual spending from their own assets. At 65, Mark’s pension starts to help. At 67, the two State Pensions change the picture again.

But £30,000 of gross pension income is not automatically £30,000 to spend. Tax depends on each person’s income and the way private pension money is taken. The timeline deliberately keeps gross pension income separate from their net spending target.

Check your own State Pension forecast and the dates and terms on your pension statements. Do not substitute a friend’s retirement age or pension amount.

Then use the Bridge to Retirement Calculator to explore the period before later income arrives. If private pension withdrawals form part of the plan, use the Pension Drawdown Tax Calculator to work back from the amount you want to spend.

Three ways to buy back some time

Their spending stays at £32,400 a year in all three options. The only thing that changes is how much work Mark keeps, so you can compare the options fairly.

To start, they look at the five years from 60 to 65. To keep it simple, we’ve left out investment growth, interest, inflation and fees. Any shortfall comes from their cash and ISAs, and they don’t touch their pensions during those five years.

This is just simple maths to show the trade-offs, not a forecast for the rest of their retirement. Leaving out growth doesn’t make it a worst case either, because inflation or a market fall could still make things tighter.

In this example, working two days a week leaves them with more at 65 than working one more year, because Mark keeps earning for five years instead of one. The catch is that he's still working for five years. A bigger balance isn't worth much if the route doesn't suit the life you want.

The real question is which setup gives them the week they want, with a plan that still holds up.

Use the Semi-Retirement Calculator to explore cutting your hours, and the One More Year Calculator to compare finishing later. Put in your real take-home pay, work costs and pension contributions so you don't count the same money twice.

Test the rest of the life, not just the first five years

None of these figures tells Helen and Mark whether they can afford to retire. They still need to fund the years after 65, allow for tax, and see what happens when life is less tidy than the example.

This is where a proper household plan helps. Start with the week and budget you have built, then test the full timeline.

1. Live longer. What changes if the plan needs to last to 95 or 100? For a couple, also look at the survivor's income and spending.
2. Spend more. Try higher everyday costs and a substantial repair early on. Don't assume your yearly pot for irregular bills will cover a big emergency straight away.
3. Earn less. What if the two-day job ends sooner than expected or is harder to find? A job you hope to find isn't the same as one you've already lined up.
4. Get poorer returns. Try lower growth and an early market fall. A smooth average can hide difficult years when you are drawing money out.
5. Change the week. Allow for health, caring responsibilities and different interests. Spending may move from travel towards help at home rather than simply falling with age.

Try the week before you commit to it

If you can, book a week off and live a few ordinary retirement days before you hand in your notice. Don't go away. Stay at home, try the class, do the walk on a Tuesday morning when everyone else is at work, and see who's actually free for lunch.

It can be surprisingly revealing. You might love the quiet mornings but find the afternoons drag without people around. The golf club you'd budgeted £1,200 a year for might lose out to a £5 walking group down the road. Or you might find that five free days is more than you want, and that two days of work feels about right.

Whatever you learn, put it back into your budget. A week of leave is a cheap way to test a decision that could shape the next 30 years.

The aim is a first version you can actually use, and you can tweak it as you go. Waiting for the perfect plan is just another way of putting off the conversation.