Other ways of measuring enough

The living standards are not the only measure. The Pensions Commission, which designed automatic enrolment, measured adequacy as a replacement rate: the share of a person’s working earnings that their retirement income replaces. The share it set is larger for lower earners and smaller for higher ones, because a lower earner spends more of their income on essentials that do not fall away at retirement.

A replacement rate starts from you rather than from a basket, which is its strength and its weakness. It follows your own income, so it assumes nothing about how you live. But a lower earner can meet the target and still have little, because the State Pension alone replaces a large share of a small wage. The Commission’s recent successor has said as much, and leans towards pairing the share with a minimum.

Consumer bodies take a third route and ask retired people what they spend, grouping the answers into tiers from essential to luxury. A survey measures what retirees do rather than what the public thinks a life needs, so it moves with the year it was taken, including the years when nobody could travel.

Each measure answers a different question. The standards ask what a described life costs. A replacement rate asks how much of your working income you keep. A survey asks what people like you spend. Your own plan is a fourth answer, and the only one built from your figures.