I guess I have mixed feelings about this. I am also curious about the change in your situation since you posted in May and you were apparently then living at a different property with your wife. I assume that since then you have moved into your current property and your wife is still living at the other property while she continues to work. One reason I mention that is that when you haven't lived in a new place for at least a year it can be hard to totally estimate annual expenses.
First, your expenses are a good example of how low expenses often flow from having a very small, inexpensive place to live. Your utilities, home insurance and real estate taxes are a small fraction of mine and I'm sure it is a function of size of home, value of home, and location. People often don't realize just how much impact home choice has on overall expenses.
Second, I think there is value in knowing what your "bare bones" expenses are. However, when trying to present them to others, I think different people will have different definitions of what bare bones expenses are. For some people those expenses would be the things that are clear needs with no wants. That doesn't seem to be what you are doing though. Things like liquor are clearly not needs and most would consider it discretionary. On the other hand, there are things that are clear needs that you don't include in your budget.
A capped repair fund of $3000 for home repairs is adequate most likely for the "ordinary" repairs that most of us have. However, this does not include the kind of major repairs that are not frequent but will happen at some point (new roof, etc).
Auto maintenance of $100 a month is probably OK for basic maintenance and repairs most years, but I have certainly had years when repair, particularly for older cars, exceeded that amount in a given year. And, there will likely come a time when your car either has to be replaced or repairs have to be made to it which exceed the value of the car.
Health care is helped because you are on medicare. Very few retired people not on medicare can approach your costs. That said, you don't include much for expenses not covered by medicare such as actual dental expenses (most dental insurance is capped and doesn't cover all costs), prescription costs (most people I know with Part D still have some costs of their own).
You also don't include some things that I would certainly consider part of my basic expenses: water, sewer, (I realize you may be on well and septic as we were at our last house - I also have had to pay well and septic maintenance and repair so know those things aren'tfree), garbage, veterinarian, pet immunizations, some travel (vacations are discretionary, visiting my mother and going to funerals or other family events are much less so), clothing (yes to some extent clothing is discretionary but there is a bare bones element to it as well), personal care items and services, computers and peripherals (may not need to be often replaced but again should be accrued for).
You have done a great basic budget for bare bones stuff if nothing goes wrong. In my life, sometimes things go wrong. A car has to be replaced (or repairs have to be done that are worth more than the car), a hurricane comes through and requires several thousand dollars of tree clean up work (yes that happened), a computer suddenly dies, an unexpected out of town funeral for a close relative, a loved pet has a serious illness. Stuff happens. So, for me, a basic budget would have to include reserve for those things.
Third, while it is good to know what your bare bones expenses are if you had to cut (and I've done that exercise myself), it has proved to be of limited help to me in retirement planning. That is because I don't want to live a life where I can only spend my bare bone expenses. Could I do it for awhile? Sure. Would I do it if I had to? Sure. Do I want to do it? No.
So it is more useful for me in my planning to look at what my budget is with discretionary expenses in there. If someone's bare bones expenses are $20,000 and the person has $60,000 a year to spend that might sound OK and if that person wants to and is spending $30,000 a year on discretionary stuff then everything is OK. On the other hand if that person wants to and is spending $80,000 a year on discretionary stuff and wants to spend $80,000 a year on discretionary stuff then everything is not OK.
So, for me, it is important in my budgeting that I look at what it will cost each year to spend what I want to spend as well as what I have to spend. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in cutting expenses. I love cutting expenses that don't affect my quality of life.
