How much you need in retirement can be a very difficult question and varies for each individual. The best way to determine how much you are likely to need in retirement is to complete a full budget for what you will need to spend. However, as a starting point there are some general "rules of thumb" that you can follow to give you an estimate of what you might need.

There are two main schools of thought on estimating how much you might need in retirement and we will look at both so that you can decide what might be more appropriate for you. 

Fidelity International released a "Retirement Savings Guidelines white paper" in 2018 which analysed how much income the average person needed in retirement compared to their pre-retirement income. Based on this paper they have released their "Income replacement rate rule of thumb".

They found that in general people needed between 55% and 85% of their pre-retirement income once they retired. Typically those with higher pre-retirement incomes needed a lower percentage than those with lower pre-retirement incomes. 

2. Retirement Living Standards

The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association have created the "Retirement Living Standards" where they have estimated what the expense needs are for three "living standards" that they have created.

These are "Minimum Lifestyle", "Moderate Lifestyle" and "Comfortable Lifestyle". An overview of how they define these three lifestlyes, and how much each lifestyle costs are below.

Both of these methods are purely starting point guides and can vary greatly depending on individual circumstances. For example if you are paying rent or a mortgage in retirement this would have a significant affect.