The Association of Superannuation Funds (ASFA) has released the Retirement Standard budgets for the March 2018 quarter.
The figures show that couples aged around 65 living a comfortable retirement need to spend $60,264 per year and singles $42,764 per year.
At the modest level, singles need to spend $27,368 and couples $39,353 per year.
Several changes to the components of the Retirement Standards costs were included from this quarter, including the separation of water rates and council costs. These two components have tended to increase at a greater rate than many other items in the consumer price index.
In addition, the costs of private health insurance have been explicitly priced for various levels of cover.
A modest retirement lifestyle is considered better than the Age Pension, but still only able to afford fairly basic activities.
A comfortable retirement lifestyle enables an older, healthy retiree to be involved in a broad range of leisure and recreational activities and to have a good standard of living through the purchase of such things as: household goods, private health insurance, a reasonable car, good clothes, a range of electronic equipment, and domestic and occasionally international holiday travel.
