How much should I have in retirement savings?

Andrew is 45 and wants to know if he will have enough to live comfortably in retirement.

Over the past eight years he and his wife have accumulated £245,000 in self-invested personal pensions (Sipps) and individual savings accounts (Isas). He and his wife want to retire in their early 60s.

"I'm not expecting to be able to retire with an extravagant lifestyle, but don't want to be worried about day-to-day expenditure," he says. "My main concern is that I really don't know how our savings compare with others in our income group. On the one hand, you read about people with ridiculously low levels of savings, on the other, you hear about needing £1m to retire comfortably.

"We have no mortgage and no dependents. Given that we have no children, we would expect to rely on some form of equity release later in life.

"We're both self-employed. I have a very variable income, my wife's is more stable. We received lump sums 12 years ago from employee stock options and the sale of my wife's business. We aim to keep costs down as I see that as the only way to outperform just buying a series of funds."