# Is £300,000 enough to retire on?

> £300,000 is close to what a lot of people actually reach, and the honest answer sits awkwardly between yes and no. Here is exactly where it lands.

**Question:** Is £300,000 enough to retire on?

**Answer:** Enough to stop, not enough for the retirement most people picture. £300,000 supports about **£1,770 a month** in today's money from 60 to 95, alongside a full State Pension from 67. That clears the PLSA's minimum standard of £1,150 by £620 a month, and falls **£955 a month short** of their moderate £2,725.

- Author: Adam Akhlaq, founder of MyRetireAge
- Published: 2026-09-15
- Updated: 2026-09-15
- Canonical URL: https://myretireage.com/blog/is-300000-enough-to-retire-uk

## Key figures

- **£1,770 a month** - what £300,000 supports from 60 to 95
- **£2,215 a month** - what the same pot supports if you stop at 67
- **£955 a month** - short of the PLSA's moderate standard, stopping at 60
- **£587,216** - the pot a moderate retirement at 60 would actually need

## What £300,000 actually pays you

£300,000 is not an income, and the honest answer to "is it enough" starts by turning it into one. Spread from 60 to 95, with a full State Pension arriving at 67, it supports about **£1,770 a month** in today's money.

That figure is not £300,000 divided by 35 years. It assumes the pot keeps growing while you draw on it, that the State Pension takes over £12,548 a year of the load from 67 (£241 a week in 2026/27), and that the last pound is spent around your ninety-fifth birthday rather than left behind. Stop later and every one of those works harder for you: from 67 the same pot supports £2,215 a month.

- **£1,770 a month** - if you stop at 60. £21,244 a year, with 7 years funded by the pot alone before the State Pension starts.
- **£2,215 a month** - if you stop at 67. Seven more years of growth, seven fewer years of spending, and no gap to bridge.
- **£2,544 a month** - for a couple, from 60. Same £300,000, but two full State Pensions worth £25,095 a year join at 67.

There is a second number worth knowing straight away. Spend £1,564 a month or less and the pot is never exhausted at all - growth plus the State Pension covers the withdrawals indefinitely. The distance between that and the £1,770 above is the whole difference between living off £300,000 and spending it.

## £300,000 clears the minimum and misses the moderate

The PLSA's Retirement Living Standards are the only widely used answer to "what does a UK retirement cost", and £300,000 lands in the awkward middle of them: comfortably past the first, a long way from the second.

*Where £1,770 a month - £300,000 from 60 - sits against the PLSA standards for one person*

| Standard | Monthly cost | Does £300,000 reach it from 60? | What it covers |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Minimum | £1,150 a month | Yes, with £620 to spare | all your needs, with a little left over for fun, but no car |
| Moderate | £2,725 a month | No, £955 short | more financial security and flexibility, a car, and a two-week holiday in Europe |
| Comfortable | £3,700 a month | No, £1,930 short | more financial freedom, some luxuries, and regular beauty treatments or theatre trips |

*PLSA figures are for a single person outside London and assume no rent and no mortgage. Our column is the Balanced scenario, spending the pot down by 95.*

So the answer depends entirely on which retirement you mean. If you own your home outright and a minimum-plus life sounds like enough - all your needs met, a little over for fun, no car - then £300,000 does it from 60 with £620 a month of headroom. If you are picturing the moderate version, with a car and a two-week holiday in Europe, £300,000 is £955 a month short and no amount of careful investing closes that gap.

> £300,000 is a minimum-plus retirement at 60, not a moderate one. The gap is £955 a month.

Waiting until 67 narrows it but does not close it: £2,215 a month is still £510 short of moderate. This is the most useful thing £300,000 can tell you, and it is worth knowing years before you stop rather than in the first month afterwards.

## The age you stop changes the answer more than anything else

The same £300,000 produces very different lifestyles depending on when you start drawing it. Between 55 and 67 the gap is £664 a month.

*What £300,000 supports each month to age 95, by the age you stop*

| You stop at | One person | A couple | Bridge years |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Age 55 | £1,551 a month | £2,191 a month | 12 |
| Age 57 | £1,631 a month | £2,320 a month | 10 |
| Age 60 | £1,770 a month | £2,544 a month | 7 |
| Age 62 | £1,877 a month | £2,716 a month | 5 |
| Age 65 | £2,066 a month | £3,020 a month | 2 |
| Age 67 | £2,215 a month | £3,261 a month | 0 |

*Balanced assumptions: 5% growth, 2.5% inflation, 0.4% fees, spending to 95. The couple column assumes two full State Pensions from 67 and one shared pot. Bridge years are the years you fund with no State Pension at all.*

Each year you wait is worth roughly £64 a month for the rest of your life, and the effect compounds twice: the pot grows for another year, and it has one fewer year to cover. On a pot this size that leverage matters more than it does on a large one, because every £100 a month is a larger share of the total.

Notice the couple column. A couple sharing £300,000 can spend £3,261 a month from 67, against the PLSA's moderate couple figure of £3,750 - short by £489, but far closer than one person gets. Two full State Pensions are worth £25,095 a year that no pot has to produce.

## What a moderate retirement would actually cost

If the moderate standard is the target, it is worth seeing the pot that reaches it rather than guessing. At 60 it is about £587,216.

- **£587,216** - for £2,725 a month from 60. £287,216 more than £300,000 - very nearly double the pot, because the 7 bridge years have to be funded twice over.
- **£430,682** - for the same £2,725 a month from 67. £130,682 more than £300,000. Waiting seven years cuts the target by £156,534.

That second figure is the practical one. Reaching a moderate retirement at 60 from £300,000 means finding another £287,216, which for most people is not a plan. Reaching it at 67 means finding £130,682, which over a decade of contributions and growth is an ordinary thing to do. The gap between those two targets is what a retirement date is really worth.

> **Or change the target rather than the pot**
>
> The PLSA standards are useful benchmarks, not a means test. Plenty of people retire well on less than moderate because their own costs are lower than the basket assumes - no car, a paid-off house, a cheaper part of the country. Work out what your life actually costs before deciding £300,000 is not enough for it.

## Where £300,000 works, and where it does not

Three people with exactly the same pot, and three different answers. Housing and the stopping age do almost all of the work.

**Owns their home outright, stops at 67: Enough** for a modest retirement

With no housing costs, £300,000 supports £2,215 a month from 67 - well past the PLSA's minimum £1,150, still £510 short of their moderate £2,725. Comfortable enough day to day, with little margin for a bad decade of returns or a new roof.

**Still renting at £900 a month, wants to stop at 60: Not enough** £280 a month short of even a minimum life

A minimum lifestyle plus rent is £2,050 a month, and £300,000 supports £1,770 from 60. Sustaining that spending from 60 would take a pot of about £384,087. Housing, not investing, is the thing to fix.

**A couple with two full State Pensions, stopping at 65: Close** for a moderate retirement

Their shared £300,000 supports £3,020 a month from 65, against the PLSA's moderate couple figure of £3,750. The same pot goes markedly further for two people than for one, because the second State Pension arrives whether or not the pot grew.

## Try it with your own pot and spending

Your pot is unlikely to be exactly £300,000 and your spending is definitely not exactly ours. Change either and watch the year it runs out move.

**Interactive: [See how long £300,000 would last for you](https://myretireage.com/pension-drawdown-calculator-uk?pot=300000&spend=1800)** - Prefilled with £300,000 from age 60 at £1,800 a month. Push the spending to £2,000 and the pot empties at 84; pull it back under £1,564 and it never empties at all. On a pot this size that cliff is steep, which is exactly why it is worth seeing before you pick a retirement date.

If you want the same exercise across every pot size and spending level rather than just this one, [How long will my pension last?](/blog/how-long-will-my-pension-last-uk) has the full grid, from £100,000 to £750,000.

## £300,000 against the 4% rule

The 4% rule says £300,000 gives you £12,000 a year, or £1,000 a month. Our engine says £1,770 a month from 60. Both are right, because they are answering different questions.

The 4% rule comes from US research into portfolios that had to survive any 30-year window with money still in them. It ignores the State Pension entirely, and it never spends the pot down. Our figure adds £12,548 a year from 67 and finishes at 95 with the pot at zero, which is what most people actually want their money to do.

The practical difference is £770 a month, and on a pot this size it is decisive: £1,000 a month is below the PLSA minimum of £1,150, while £1,770 is comfortably above it. If you have read that £300,000 cannot fund a retirement, the 4% rule is usually why - and leaving the State Pension out of a UK calculation is what makes it wrong here.

## The bridge years decide it

Almost every difference in this article traces back to the same thing: the years between stopping work and your State Pension starting, when the pot pays for everything on its own.

Retire at 60 with a State Pension age of 67 and you have 7 of those years. Spending £1,800 a month across them costs £151,200 with nothing arriving to replace it, which is why a £300,000 pot is down to about £183,263 by the time the State Pension finally starts.

That single fact explains the £445-a-month gap between stopping at 60 and stopping at 67. Nothing about the lifestyle changes between those two rows. The pot simply has to carry 7 years unaided in one of them, and none in the other. On £300,000 the bridge is the binding constraint, because the pot is not large enough to absorb seven unfunded years and still fund a good thirty after them.

> **If your State Pension age is 68**
>
> Anyone born from April 1978 onwards waits an extra year, which is one more year of the pot working alone. On these assumptions £300,000 then supports £1,734 a month from 60 rather than £1,770. Your own State Pension age is [free to check on gov.uk](https://www.gov.uk/state-pension-age).

## What moves £300,000 from tight to workable

Six changes that move the answer, and what each is worth in monthly spending against the £1,770 a month the pot supports from 60.

1. **Work to 65 instead of 60: £296 a month more** - The least popular lever and the most effective one you fully control. Five more years takes what £300,000 supports from £1,770 to £2,066 a month, and a partial version works too - even stopping at 62 is worth £107 a month.
2. **Keep some income coming in: £500 a month from £500** - Consultancy, two days a week, or a lodger. Any income that is not your pot is income your pot does not have to produce, and on a pot this size it is the single fastest route to the moderate standard: £500 a month of work takes you to £2,270, more than half of the £955 gap closed. It matters most in the bridge years, when it also keeps you from selling investments early.
3. **Remove housing costs before you stop** - Every £900 a month of rent or mortgage is £900 a month of the pot's output already spoken for - and £900 is over half of everything £300,000 produces at 60. Clearing a mortgage or downsizing changes the answer to this article more reliably than any investment decision.
4. **Plan as a household, not as two people** - A couple sharing £300,000 can spend £2,544 a month from 60 rather than £1,770, because two full State Pensions bring in £25,095 a year between them from 67.
5. **Fill the gaps in your National Insurance record: £111 a month** - The full State Pension needs 35 qualifying years. On 30 years, £300,000 supports £1,659 a month from 60 instead of £1,770 - a permanent cut for something that is often cheap to fix, and it bites harder on a small pot because the State Pension is a larger share of the total. Checking is [free on gov.uk](https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension).
6. **Cut your fees** - We assume 0.4% a year. Paying 1% instead is a drag on every year of a 35-year drawdown, and it is one of the few things on this list you can change this afternoon and never think about again.

## The assumptions behind £1,770 a month

Every figure here rests on a guess about growth and a guess about how long you live. Both are worth seeing rather than hiding.

*What £300,000 supports from 60, by growth scenario*

| Scenario | Growth before inflation | Monthly spending supported |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Cautious | 3% | £1,559 a month |
| Balanced | 5% | £1,770 a month |
| Adventurous | 7% | £2,023 a month |

*All three assume 2.5% inflation and 0.4% fees, and all are in today's money.*

That is a range of £465 a month on the same £300,000, decided by something nobody controls. Every row still lands between the PLSA's minimum and moderate standards, which is the useful conclusion: on a pot this size the growth assumption changes how comfortable you are, not which retirement you are having.

*What £300,000 supports from 60, by how long you plan for*

| Plan to age | Monthly spending supported |
| --- | --- |
| 85 | £1,972 a month |
| 90 | £1,854 a month |
| 95 | £1,770 a month |
| 100 | £1,709 a month |

*We use 95 as standard, because planning to average life expectancy leaves half of us with an unfunded decade.*

> **Everything here is in today's money**
>
> We subtract inflation from growth, so £1,770 a month means the lifestyle £1,770 buys right now, in every year of the plan. The nominal figure you would actually withdraw in 2050 is far larger, and buys exactly the same shopping.

## What this calculation leaves out

Four things could move the answer materially, and none of them are in the numbers above.

- **Tax.** Usually 25% of a pension - up to £75,000 on this pot - can be taken tax free, and the rest is taxed as income when you draw it. A £300,000 pot drawn steadily alongside the State Pension stays largely inside the £12,570 personal allowance and the basic-rate band, so the bill is usually small - one of the few places a modest pot has an advantage.
- **The order returns arrive in.** A steady £1,770 a month assumes steady growth. A bad first five years is far more damaging than the same five years at 80, because you sell units to live on while they are cheap. Holding one to two years of spending in cash is the usual defence, and it matters more here than on a large pot with room to absorb the loss.
- **Care costs.** Later-life care can consume a pot this size several times over, and none of these figures include it.
- **Access.** The normal minimum pension age is 55, rising to 57 on 6 April 2028. Retiring before then means the first years cannot come from a pension at all - they have to come from ISAs or other savings you can reach at any age.

None of that makes the exercise pointless. £300,000 is a real pot that a lot of people reach, and knowing it buys roughly £1,770 a month from 60 or £2,215 from 67 tells you which retirement is on the table and which one needs another decision.

## How to check your own numbers

1. **Add up every pot you have** - Old workplace pensions, the current one, SIPPs and ISAs. Defined benefit pensions are different - treat their income as a second State Pension and subtract it from your spending rather than adding a pot. A small DB pension is worth far more than it looks next to £300,000.
2. **Get your State Pension forecast** - Free on [gov.uk](https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension). It shows what you are actually on track to receive, which matters more here than on a large pot: a shortfall of five qualifying years costs about £111 a month of spending from this pot.
3. **Set spending to your real budget, housing included** - Then run it in the [drawdown calculator](/pension-drawdown-calculator-uk) and look at the depletion age, not the monthly figure. If it lands before 90, the plan needs a change somewhere.
4. **Work out what another few years is worth** - Put your real numbers into the [retirement age calculator](/retirement-age-calculator-uk). On £300,000 the stopping age moves the answer more than anything else you control, and seeing the date move is more persuasive than reading that it does.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is £300,000 enough to retire on?

It is enough to stop, and short of the retirement most people picture. £300,000 supports about £1,770 a month in today's money from 60 to 95, or £2,215 a month from 67, alongside a full State Pension. That is above the PLSA's minimum standard of £1,150 and £955 a month below their moderate £2,725, assuming you own your home outright.

### Can I retire at 60 with £300,000?

Yes if you own your home and a modest lifestyle is enough: it supports £1,770 a month to 95, with 7 years funded by the pot alone before the State Pension starts. Add rent or a mortgage and it stops working - a minimum lifestyle plus £900 of housing would need a pot of about £384,087.

### How much income will £300,000 give me?

About £1,770 a month - £21,244 a year - if you stop at 60 and spend the pot down by 95, including the State Pension from 67. Stopping at 67 raises it to £2,215 a month. An annuity would pay differently, and guarantees the income for life instead.

### How long will £300,000 last in retirement?

Drawing from 60 with the State Pension from 67: it lasts to 93 at £1,800 a month and to 84 at £2,000 a month. Below about £1,564 a month it is never exhausted, because growth and the State Pension cover the withdrawals. Every pot size and spending level is in [How long will my pension last?](/blog/how-long-will-my-pension-last-uk).

### Can I retire at 55 with £300,000?

It supports about £1,551 a month to 95, which is £664 a month less than the same pot at 67 and barely above the PLSA's minimum of £1,150. You would also have 12 years before any State Pension, and the normal minimum pension age rises to 57 in April 2028, so retiring at 55 after that needs ISAs or other savings to bridge the first years.

### Is £300,000 enough for a couple to retire on?

It goes further for a couple, not less far: two full State Pensions are £25,095 a year of income no pot has to produce. A shared £300,000 supports about £2,544 a month from 60 or £3,261 from 67, against the PLSA's moderate couple figure of £3,750.

### What pot would I need for a moderate retirement?

About £587,216 to spend £2,725 a month from 60, or £430,682 from 67. That is £287,216 and £130,682 more than £300,000 respectively - which is why the stopping age is usually an easier lever than the pot size.

### What does the 4% rule say about £300,000?

It gives £12,000 a year, or £1,000 a month, rising with inflation. That is £770 a month less than our figure, because the 4% rule ignores the State Pension and is designed to leave the pot intact rather than spend it. On a UK pot this size that omission is the difference between falling below the PLSA minimum and clearing it.

### How much tax will I pay on a £300,000 pension?

Usually 25% - up to £75,000 - can be taken tax free, and the rest is taxed as income at your normal rates, with the £12,570 personal allowance applying in 2026/27. Drawn steadily alongside the State Pension, a pot this size generally stays within the basic-rate band, so the bill is modest.

### Do these figures account for inflation?

Yes. Every figure is in today's money: we subtract inflation from growth, so £1,770 a month means the lifestyle £1,770 buys today, in every year of the plan. The amount you actually withdraw would rise each year to keep pace.

## Sources

- [The new State Pension: what you'll get](https://www.gov.uk/new-state-pension/what-youll-get) - GOV.UK
- [Check your State Pension forecast](https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension) - GOV.UK
- [Tax when you get a pension](https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-pension) - GOV.UK
- [Retirement Living Standards](https://www.retirementlivingstandards.org.uk/) - Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association

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This article is guidance, not financial advice. Every figure is produced by the same engine that powers our free calculators, stated in today's money on the assumptions named above, and checked against 2026/27 rates. Your own position will differ - if a decision this size is close, speak to a regulated financial adviser.