One estimate from the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia Retirement Standard says an annual income of $56,000 is needed to give a home-owning couple a comfortable retirement.

They define ‘comfortable’ as “enabling an older, healthy retiree to be involved in a broad range of leisure and recreational activities and to have a good standard of living”. You can buy household goods, run a reasonable car, get some good clothes, enjoy private health insurance and the occasional overseas holiday.

Let’s not forget that half of men aged 65 today will live past 86, half of women will reach 90. So a retirement of 25 years is quite likely for more than half of all Australians.

According to the Australian and Securities and Investments Commission's retirement calculator, for a couple to generate $56,000 a year (including part age pension) over that period, they’ll need $800,000 in capital between them.

That’s a lot of money.

One way to reduce your outgoings, and therefore that dependency on sizeable capital, is retirement village living.

Communal life enables you to share the big costs among many residents and with low, fixed weekly fees, allow you to better manage your budget. In many cases, you also have the benefit of having downsized from a family home and the cash injection that can bring to your bank balance.

One great benefit about retirement village life, one that is often overlooked, is that it's been carefully designed with age in mind. So you won't have to do any alterations as you get older: ramps, or changes to the garden to make it safe, are already there. This means there are no surprise costs – often expensive ones – that will come with the family home

Many retirement village residents live on the pension, which is now indexed to the CPI. It makes the low weekly fees and laws limiting increases an attractive match. The whole idea is to allow you to plan to age well.