<p>Lethe little squares re like 1/2 oz…</p>
<p>How could you eat JUST one little square every three days? I mean, if you’re going to eat chocolate, how do you just eat a tiny bit? I don’t buy it very often anymore, but I know full well that whatever I buy will be gone that day. Unless it’s crappy chocolate, and in that case, why bother?</p>
<p>My husband keeps track of every single one of our expenditures, and has done so for many, many years. He can tell me our daily spending average per month for probably 8-10 years. It doesn’t really change anything, but he fully admits he just enjoys figuring out the numbers.</p>
<p>For the past few years, I have taken a few minutes after balancing the checkbook (for the credit union accounts, used for all bills) to do some subtotals. I just did Oct tonight</p>
<p>Categories
- cash withdrawals
- total of checks
- total of autopay etc and all other withdrawals (conveniently totaled for my on the statement). II note the amount of the Visa bill (always high, but includes some things like Comcast bill, donations, etc). . I make a few words of explanation for any large, non-regular expenses. College expenses are noted but omitted from the total</p>
<p>This is how we will get start our approximation of average monthly expenses for retirement. To it we will add a car-savings guesstimate (we pay cash) and a medical insurance estimate (we don’t have any pre-Medicare coverage if we retire before 65). There are some expenses that will go down a bit, but hopefully travel goes up 
</p>
<p>Note - There are lots of other ways to go about this. This is just the method that works for me. And sadly what it says is that we probably will need as much money in retirement as the adviser recommended a few years ago. It sounded high at te time. But now I have some history to support it. </p>
<p>CountingDown, I guess this thread can attract people that keep very detailed records. If you ever sell your place some of those records are going to be very handy.</p>
<p>Dragonmom, i like Lindt chocolates. I like to buy the milk chocolate balls. Yes. i can eat one square every 3 days. </p>
<p>“Note - There are lots of other ways to go about this. This is just the method that works for me. And sadly what it says is that we probably will need as much money in retirement as the adviser recommended a few years ago. It sounded high at the time. But now I have some history to support it.”</p>
<p>It’s hard to figure out the right amount. I don’t know if we’ll go with the monthly average in a high month, or a low month, or just take the two and average them. Or take exactly what we’re spending right now and pull out the things we won’t need, and add the additional things we will. I figure it’s probably going to be a wash, but the best idea might be to pay off as much debt as possible, including the mortgage, do the large necessary expenditures on your house, and then retire. At least you’d be in the best position at that time.</p>
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<p>I do that kind of analysis, and compute a subsistence, moderate, and WooHoo level of cash flow. I think paying off debt is critical before retirement. I then compare that with what ESPlanner tells me. We are lucky enough to be in good shape, barring something catastrophic. </p>
<p>I should get that software for my husband. He would enjoy working the numbers. But our monthly numbers are really inconsistent. I guess if your numbers show a WooHoo cash flow level, that’s the time to start feeling comfortable. Though I suppose everyone’s WooHoo level is different.</p>
<p>^ I take a 2-year average monthly by category, and then figure out how low I could go, what would be comfortable, and what would be extravagant for the category. For example, for groceries, we could spend 1/3 as much, 2/3 as much, or twice as much (this is after the last remaining teen leaves). Same for entertainment. And so on. The numbers, even for WooHoo, are well within expectations, especially if DW continues to work. </p>
<p>That makes sense, if you have such a long historical average. Our problem is sometimes we have months where very big expenses come up, and that is put into the daily spending average. Our lowest month is probably less than 1/3 of our highest month. But maybe it would be better to have a category for these sort of expenses, as car and home maintenance, or vacations really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. But some things are hard to plan for.</p>
<p>@busdriver11, Quicken has made it easy for me. I download credit cards and bank account information automatically. I use basic categories (for example, stuff from Amazon is just “Household,” unless there’s an exceptional purchase, in which case I might override the category). Walgreens is “medical,” even if maybe a Snapple sneaks in there. I think the categories are at least 80% accurate, probably more. </p>
<p>ETA: be careful not to miss things because of your data gathering window. For example, budget for car purchases, even if you didn’t buy one in that window. </p>
<p>That’s probably the problem. We don’t actually budget, we just track. My husband lives on Quicken, but we don’t budget out ahead of time. It’s all done after the fact. Though I think if he made it as a yearly average, that would be a pretty good idea of what we need.</p>
<p>Busdriver, I have never budgeted and neither has H (nor I believe has S nor D). Nonetheless, we are all quite comfortable financially. To us, the key is spending less than we earn. If the account looks to be getting low, we skimp more. When we have more than $xxxx in the checking account, we move some over into savings so we don’t have so much in checking.</p>
<p>Instead of setting aside a bit each month of insurance, car maintenance, home maintenance, taxes, and other know expenses, we just know that they are definitely going to be there and try to save up enough so that when these expenses hit, we have enough set aside in savings to cover without (much) pain. Since it’s worked well for us to live below our means, we have never bothered to make any budget.</p>
<p>I know many people find budgets freeing while others find them encumbering. We’re more the latter category and have decided it’s more hassle than we are willing to bother with at this point.</p>
<p>I should probably have used the word “plan” rather than “budget.” What I was describing referred to figuring out how much we would “need” in retirement at three different levels of retirement. </p>
<p>We don’t budget, but I have a good sense of what we have, where it goes, and what we will need in the future. I often complain that my wife doesn’t retire, but it sure makes financial planning easy :)</p>
<p>This thread perked up my interest with the chocolate discussion! However it is just like everything else - with the budgeting, living so you don’t run out of money. With food (and chocolate) don’t let overeating shorten your life - exercise and take in less calories so you can live well in your body. Good discipline (kudos) to have the chocolate ‘reward’ spread out. </p>
<p>Getting the ‘big picture’ right. Sometimes looking at the details helps too.</p>
<p>Having the right plans in place may mean not having to look too closely at some expenditures. However some have goals and then it is great to follow it all to make the goals.</p>
<p>My philosophy is like Himom, never bother with budgeting, my line of work was “budgeting” for over 30 years, didn’t want to see any more spreadsheets or calculations when I got home!! </p>
<p>For my household, living below our means is what we do, frugal and almost never buy things at regular price (e.g. clothing, groceries, home maintenance stuff etc.) except for urgent necessities.We do go on vacation every year, my son went to a private college, had a 4 year tuition scholarship, we just paid room and board, my daughter is a freshman at a state university, we are paying full fare w/o financial aid (that’s the problem with middle class), but all her 4 years of tuition, room and board are all accounted for, money already saved for that. Mortgage paid up 2 years ago, timed it before retirement. My two children will graduate college without any student loans.</p>
<p>I am recently retired, our monthly expenses will likely be similar, have a government pension, though no COLA, it is still a “known” income. My husband will also have a pension when he retires. Pension is a wonderful thing.</p>
<p>I won’t be rich, but we will live comfortably. Good saving habit is essential.</p>
<p>Living comfortably is a great thing and something that many aspire to. We are grateful that we were able to pay enough so our kids could graduate without debt and not have that burden. I have no pension but am grateful that H does and that if he predeceases me, I will have a portion of his pension. That is very reassuring and allows us to sleep well at night, because I don’t really trust my investment skills.</p>
<p>Yep, love the defined pension. </p>
<p>I’d like to go back to the “where should I retire” part of our discussion. We’re all familiar with the college selection resources, where you answer questions about what your preferences are, and rate them according to a scale of I portage. When I look at the retirement lists, they’re just that - lists. I see, for example, Boise, Idaho at the top of several of them. I discount that because weather is really important to us, but the editors use a calculation that doesn’t weight characteristics the same as I would. </p>
<p>Wouldn’t it be cool if we had retirement selectors like the college ones? You could answer questions about taxes, and indicate A preference for low property taxes or for low state income taxes. You could indicate whether you preferred warm or cold, and how important that is (and Boise would not make my cut). Living near an airport, urban vs rural, big or small - all the considerations which are important, but based on how important each consideration is to us, not how important they are to some editor at Kiplinger. </p>
<p>Wouldn’t that be cool? Has anyone done that, and if so, could you share a link?</p>
<p>@hayden, I think this site lets you customize. <a href=“Find My Great Place Tool | GreatPlacesToRetire.com”>http://www.greatplacestoretire.com/rankformclimate.php</a>.</p>
<p>Climate does matter a lot to me, but so is a harder to predict item – where my kids will be. My son has been in grad school on the West Coast since September and says his email inbox is flooded with recruiting inquiries. He was just asked if he wants to be CTO/co-founder of a startup that main founder will be able to fund. He can’t really manage much more than his classes, which I pointed out when he called to ask my opinion. While I don’t think he’ll take this one, I suspect that others will be coming. So, I don’t think he’ll be leaving the West Coast.</p>
<p>Out of the blue, two days ago, our daughter, who is in a program to become a nurse practitioner, said, “How would you feel about my moving to California?” She has lived her whole life on the East Coast and goes to college/grad school in the same city as we live in (though we are in an exurb) and wants to try something different. So who knows? We are going to rent a place for a couple of weeks on the West Coast this winter to get used to the idea.</p>
<p><a href=“Retire Like A College Kid In A University Town | HuffPost Post 50”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<p>Per expense tracking, a lot can be learned about non-regular bills by looking at category breakdowns on the annual Visa rollup. </p>