Thank you. However, all we’ve done so far is write things down, send information and get alarmed. The hard part hasn’t even started yet…paying attention and cutting back.
@busdriver11 – Even if you do not start the analysis yet, you may want to pull down the transactions now so that you will have the info available for when you do want to drill down. I pull down my checking account & CC transaction data annually so that I can sort it when I feel like it. Good luck!
@busdriver11 , I expect you’ll find it a lot easier to change your spending habits when you see everything in writing each week (or however often you choose to update your tracking.) Sounds like you’ve made a good start.
We’d sometimes do a financial fast and buy nothing except groceries, toiletries and gas for a month (unless some true emergency cropped up, such as having to replace a two tires.) I do nearly all shopping online, so other times I’d bookmark anything I wanted to buy and wait at least a week before deciding if I still needed or wanted it enough to make the purchase. It may sound silly, but that sort of thing made us more mindful of our spending and we increased our saving.
Yeah, once you start focusing on it, it can be surprisingly easy to cut back because a lot of stuff really isn’t missed that much. Make a game out of it.
We have lived pretty low before…both from lower middle class backgrounds and have been completely broke and unemployed before. I feel we could do it again if we had to, though it would just about kill us to give up coffee and wine again! And heat 
I think we have to find a good medium between going all out and carelessly spending like we are now. It has become a habit as we are watching our income and net worth increase. But the reality is, if retirement is around the corner (hopefully), we could not continue to do this into retirement, or we would run out of money. We did consider that we could sell some rental properties and pay off our mortgage, which would take care of the excess.
Maybe a game or a financial fast…though I don’t know how long that would last! My husband has been tracking expenses in Quicken for years, though we haven’t looked at the numbers for a long time.
Better a happy medium now than having to watch the heat in your old age, right? 
We’ve found Quicken to be really helpful in tracking expenditures. We set up categories for lunch, Metro, books, etc. that really enables us to see where that discretionary money goes. I know that level of detail can be crazy-making, but even a couple of months of that tracking can give you some direction.
Not a problem. Coffee isn’t expensive when you brew it at home.; it’s the kiosks that break the budget. And wine can be quite affordable. I buy a pretty good Cabernet at Gocery Outlet on sale for $6.40 a bottle.
I like good wine for $6.40 a bottle! Fortunately in Washington state, we can get great wine for just a few bucks more, consistently. But we eat out a lot, and you can easily spend double that on one little glass.
I see our major issue is not so much the little stuff, though there certainly is no reason to waste money. But our house related expenses, mortgage, property taxes, insurance and upkeep is well over 50% of our expenses. Probably not a house to keep throughout retirement, but my husband has done so much work on it, I don’t see us moving. But it would certainly be an option if necessary.
Can you cut down on the eating out? I think that’s a huge money suck for a lot of folks.
We did our financial plan quite a few years ago. I found it very hard to do the detailed spending analysis (even though we use Quicken/Quickbooks) because there are a lot of entwined business and personal expenditures.
One thing that I decided a while ago was that there were probably a few key choices that affected one’s spending level:
1, Where you live. We live in an affluent suburb in the Northeast but consciously chose to live in a less affluent part of that suburb (difference between biotech CEOs and software engineers). The total RE cost is only part of it. In the affluent part, many drive drive a fancy cars that get replaced reasonably frequently and have gardeners who come more than once a week to take just a couple of examples. In our neighborhood, which has gotten significantly more affluence over the years, cars are less luxurious and until recently, almost no one had gardeners. One tends to sync one’s spending choices with one’s peer group – the Mercedes and the gardener just come to seem normal. [I don’t think it is just the neighborhood, but on how one defines one’s peer group. We are eating out a lot more with folks than we used to – probably empty nesting contributes to that – and the level of restaurants has crept up significantly over the years].
2. How you vacation. We have always traveled. I do far too much for work and can often, though not, always use points (of which I have millions). We have friends who hire expensive tour companies to organize travel when they travel. We do research and wing it. I’m sure we get less in each day (e.g.; driver doesn’t pick us at 8:30 to tour X site from 9-10 and then driver takes us to Y site for visit from 11-12:30; then driven to special lunch …). Several friends actually shared with us “personalized, exclusive” itineraries from trips to SE Asia (which by the way were close to identical) and we drew from their experience, but perhaps the best time we had on the trip was walking around the lake in Hanoi and talking to students who approached us (to practice English) about their lives. Our level of expenditures on trips has increased as well over time. We did hire a tour company to organize a week in Yangshou and Longsheng in Guilin, China. Highly desirable because we don’t speak Chinese and no one there speaks English but we could have done without it or hired local guides in each place.
3. How you educate your kids. For most of us in this thread, this is finished. But, public or private K-12? Public or private university? Do we pay for grad school? [For us, this was super high priority and we saved for it and fully funded private university and grad schools. We intended to send the kids to public schools (except middle school, which our area public schools do badly). Our D then wanted to go to private HS but our son went back to public HS.
One huge expense category seems to be health care (perhaps because I am an entrepreneur and it is my company that pays my premiums) – at least until we are both eligible for Medicare. I suspect that healthcare in the US is probably still a big line item even after Medicare. Every time I see a doctor, I get a mystery bill weeks later for charges in excess of what insurance covers, etc. Given that the big tax cut of last year was not paired with corresponding spending cuts, I suspect that the scalpel will be coming out for Medicare (and SS) so health care costs will increase.
@BunsenBurner, I’m guessing that life is a lot better when you don’t have to count pennies day to day but make the big choices that influence the others. Our Plan B – if we were to suffer a big drop in income – has always been to move to an area with a lower cost of living and/or a place with government-provided healthcare (ShawWife grew up in Canada and has always wanted to live at least part of the year in Canada). I’m not sure what that would mean for you, but I would push for making a few big choices and not thinking so much about lots of the little choices.
@busdriver11 , my house-related expenses are probably the biggest category of my expenses, too. Property taxes are not as high here as they are in many places, but they are substantial. All assessments in my community were increased an average of 15% this year, and the school district wants to build a new high school and expand other schools, so I’m guessing the assessor’s comment that increased assessments don’t necessarily lead to higher taxes is not going to prove true.
I’m not recommending this as a cost cutting measure, but we are investing in making our house cheaper to run and easier to maintain. Since my lovely bride continues to work outside the home for a paycheck, I might as well spend her money :)), and we are removing oil heat and adding geothermal. We are also replacing two rubber roofs that perhaps could be patched for another year or two. We are replacing a well tank that might have another year of life, choosing to do it when a plumber will be here anyway.
We are debating some other changes that are expensive, but will make the house more enjoyable and easier for our heirs to sell, when the time comes.
Longtime readers of this thread will know that I wanted to convince my wife to retire. I failed. Miserably. So, I may as well enjoy the projects to fill my day
Yes, we probably could/should cut down on eating out…though since we travel for our job, some of it is very hard to avoid. Maybe trying to target happy hour more often would be cheaper.
I do agree that much of ones expenses are the big choices, where you choose to live, how you educate your kids, vacations. Health care is more costly for us than it has to be, because of the services we choose to use.
DH would retire tomorrow if there was a decent personal healthcare plan available. The ones in our state suck. Anny suggestions?
I know several people who are continuing to work primarily for their excellent employee group healthcare. That’s a major draw for government jobs, which tend to have lower pay but better healthcare benefits because they are a very large group with younger and older workers.
Drum roll, please…as of last week, I have met the requirements to retire with medical benefits. I don’t intend to leave - but if I had to, I could. It’s a great feeling.
Congrats, @dragonmom , and well earned!
@jym626
Hi!
“The ones in our state suck”
in what way? lack of coverage? cost?
define “suck”.
Is Kaiser available there?
what age is your DH?
Unless BCBS comes back (and its an HMO which I do not like) the only options are a terrible plan called Ambetter, and Kaiser, which is seriously over-subscribed, and means DH would lose his current Drs. Kaiser is not convenient where we are.