We drink a lot of our wine and coffee at home, too, @sherpa , however we do eat out quite a bit also. Washington wine is really delicious and cheap, and we can get some very good stuff for $10-$11 a bottle. However… $6.39 a bottle for delicious wine is phenomenal. Funny, there is a Grocery Outlet in my town, across from a Starbucks we frequent. I have never gone in there, but now I think I’m going to take a visit, ASAP! Thanks for the heads up.
Here’s a sample website that shows how to make a spreadsheet with pre and post retirement estimates for planning purposes.
@busdriver11 - Here’s the lowdown on Grocery Outlet; they generally have pretty good prices but limited selection, but the best thing about them are their deals on stuff at or near the “sell by” date, some of which I’m happy to buy, but…
For example, I recently passed Horizon Organic milk there for 8 cents for a half gallon with the sell by date the following day, but bought several cans of minestrone soup, also priced at 8 cents.
Yesterday DW picked up a wheel of brie for less than $2.
As for there wine, I don’t know how they do it, but their prices are incredible. Be sure to ask if they ever have sales; my local store has a 20% off sale twice a year.
Here’s another online calculator to guesstimate your expenses:
I watched part of Queen of Versailles. It was too difficult to watch the idiots doing idiotic things.
I’m going to run a Quicken report to see what I spend. We have been fairly big savers, I think, both into my C-Corp’s defined benefit plan and indirectly by selling my ownership interest of the firm I run (which has a number of employees) to a firm owned by our dynasty trust. All carefully done (at arms length, with accounts ensuring everything was done properly, …) But, I really don’t know how much we spend.
I think property tax on our house and extra lot is probably about $16K per year.
One question for you guys. I was visiting Sanibel Island in Florida and thinking about the value of property on or near the sea. The average elevation above sea level is 3’-4’ and at its max 13’. The ocean level is estimated to rise between 4.1’ and 6.6’ by 2100 (according to something published down there). That means a significant part of the island and probably all of its beaches will be underwater well before 2100. So, does that mean the value of property in places like Sanibel is at its peak (or close to it) and should start declining. If so, should one rent in places like that rather than buy? Or am I missing something?
Shawbridge, this question about sea level rise haunts us. But we have told our kids, don’t count on our coastal property. We are very much counting on it to last until our last days. We make a point to enjoy every day. Do we have our head in the sand, so to speak?
If in fact seas rise 4-6’ and max elevation is 13’, buying on Sanibel Island will be very risky. I would think if the beaches are gone and large parts of the island are underwater/inaccessible, it won’t be good for property values.
However, 2100 is a long way off. Different models have different and conflicting predictions, they’ve all done a bad job at predicting in the short term (10-20 years), and they don’t factor in technological innovations that could materially impact climate, such as development of practical fusion or economical carbon sequestration. There was an article a few months ago that said the models have been found to run hot by a factor of 2x and therefore temp change by 2100 won’t be nearly as high as predicted, and another article just recently that said that the worst case models now have a 93% chance of coming to pass.
It’s all been politicized beyond belief, climate is an incredibly complex system that we don’t fully understand and poorly model, with poor input data, so who knows what will happen.
I guess what it comes down to is, do you feel lucky?
My new house is 14’ above sea level, I’m not too worried. Barring some extreme medical or other technological breakthroughs, DW and I will be long gone by 2100, as will our kids. I can’t really worry about 2-3 generations from now, who knows if this house will still be in the family by then.
One other thing about Florida - a lot of the state is only 3-4’ above sea level. If seas rise that much, large portions of southern FL will be under water and pretty much uninhabitable.
And if warming leads to a rise in number and intensity of hurricanes, the barrier islands are toast. IMO.
Agreed that there is a lot of uncertainty, @notrichenough. I’m guessing that, even with the uncertainty, the beaches will probably be toast well before 2100. And, maybe things like roads and sewer systems. I was thinking about property values. When do they start to decline because the long-run isn’t there. Not yet, but in 20 years? Causes me to think about Sausalito as well.
" When do they start to decline because the long-run isn’t there"
Definitely when homeowner’s insurance gets prohibitively expensive or impossible to buy.
Fl is quite flat. Sausalito is not. I’d rather live on the hills in Sausalito with a view overlooking mountains and the water than near the water.
@VeryHappy it has “maximize your 2017 and 2018 returns” plus "get every credit and deduction you deserve, and how ta law changes affect you. 130 pages. laid out to be pretty simple to read/walk through. Also, “easy ways to get the biggest refund”. A page with 2018 tax planning.
Seems to cover a lot of basics.
Our state has many of the populated areas at or very close to sea level. If and when oceans rise, our state of HI will change dramatically. It makes sense to me to consider living further from the ocean than we do IF I was going to live to be well beyond my life expectancy. In my lifetime, I’m hoping our home that is very close to sea level will be fine.
Our insurer convinced us that with so much severe weather, both flood and hurricane insurance is a good thing, so we have purchased it to cover these risks as best we can.
Our sea level properties are still selling for extremely high prices, even with hardly any elevation.
@shawbridge - It’s impossible to know, but I’d expect a slow, gradual decline that will eventually accelerate and once the decline accelerates it’ll be a race to the exits.
At some point the Florida coast will start flooding with increasing regularity— it is already beginning, and either the coast will be able to adapt by building elevated houses or buyers won’t want to take the chance. Also at some point well before 2100 our current federal flood insurance program will be unsustainable.
The NFIP is already unsustainable for people buying today. If you are grandfathered in, it may not be so bad, but when a property is sold you lose the grandfathering.
The flood line at our house on the Cape is 14 ft above mean high tide. According to the FEMA flood zone maps, about two feet of one corner sticks out into the flood zone (not sure how this is even possible when the back of the house is level with the ground, but whatever).
So the bank required us to get flood insurance. This property has never flooded, is barely even in the flood zone, and the quote we got for NFIP insurance for $250K for the building (which is the max you can get) and only $50K in personal property, with a $10,000 deductible, was over $12000/yr.
Fortunately we were able to get private flood insurance for about 1/10 of that amount. Private insurance can cherry-pick properties though, so they may not cover everything.
We have stopped saving for retirement, except for company match in my 403(b). If stock market doesn’t go into free fall, we have our current income and possibly a good bit more. I still always worry about whether we will have enough, but I also know we have plenty of room to downsize. Sometimes I think H and Iwill end up with more income in retirement than we want to use… on the other hand it would be so easy to spend more— get a cleaning lady, a yard person, snowplow in winter… small luxuries add up quick! And then healthcare is a huge unknown, with costs skyrocketing and the government wanting to cut back on Medicare.
“on the other hand it would be so easy to spend more— get a cleaning lady, a yard person, snowplow in winter… small luxuries add up quick”
Those kind of things might move from luxuries to necessities when you are older.
@sherpa, we live in a houseboat (floating home) in Sausalito. Water i6’ higher would probably require them to do a new dock or might go all the up to the road (Bridgeway). But, the hills go way up. If/when we buy there, it is causing me to think about going up into the hills a bit (earthquake risk must be higher though).
I travel a lot and my wife has a full-time career so over time as I did better financially, we have accumulated a full staff — cleaning lady (once a week (used to be twice), landscape design-ish person, lawn guys who also do snow removal. We used to have a housekeeper/nanny. My wife is very good with drills and saws (I’m not — I’m just good with ideas) so she does repair stuff but gets help. Fortunately, she is incredibly warm, generous and charming so we have a cadre of contractors who are happy to help her. Maybe we will substitute condos for houses (or houseboats) over time, which would lessen the need for some of the staff.
We think about stopping contributions to our retirement accounts, but since we are trapped in AMT hell, our Fed+State incremental rate is over 40%. I can’t bring myself to stop putting money in when the tax savings are so high.
Haven’t gotten around to figuring out what it will be for this year, but I think we will be out from under AMT. Might be time to re-examine this.