Poll: How much do you actually spend each year?

[unclemick]

Rumors about the basement in Missoula are false. FALSE! do you hear me!

12 to 89k/yr. From the LA swamp to post Katrina St Joe MO to dating a hot 65 year old chick in KCK.

Jan 1993 to present. Spending varies all over depending on where the party is.

heh heh heh -

[ESRwannabe]

I'm not retired.

Age = 36.

Income from w-2 & investments = roughly $80k per year.

Living expenses = roughly $24k per year, almost half of that is for rent.

About half of my investments are in retirement accounts. For my taxable accounts, I still have a good amount of carryover losses from tax loss harvesting.

[Midpack]

I voted, but I entered an amount that is not at all what we actually spend. Does that help?

[heeyy_joe]

I have worked out our retirement budget for 2014 (no debts!) to be $60000. Of that figure $15,000. is a set aside for health care premiums, advantage plans, deductibles, co-pays, and out of pocket. The budget is $45k fixed expenses and $15k variable expenses. Things like travel and entertainment and oop medical fall into the variable category- so does our Christmas budget.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack I voted, but I entered an amount that is not at all what we actually spend. Does that help?

If it did, then it would help even more if you voted more than once. The more the merrier, oui?

Has anybody figured out how to do that? Making up another account takes way too much work, if a voter gets no compensation for it.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound Making up another account takes way too much work, if a voter gets no compensation for it.

Not to mention it is a no-no unless you get advanced approval:

Quote:

Participants may only have one account unless moderator permission for multiple accounts is granted. Moderators may consolidate or delete multiple accounts if permission is not obtained.

[NW-Bound]

I know. There are reasons for it, which everybody knows.

What I did not know was that multiple accounts are even available with permission. Who do I befriend to get that?

PS. Nah! Why would I want to get multiple accounts? To cast multiple votes in polls like this?

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound Who do I befriend to get that?

My guess is you'd have to have some highly unusual justification to get the OK - something along the lines of being placed into the witness protection program...

[NW-Bound]

Unusual justification? Something like having a split or multiple personality?

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound Unusual justification? Something like having a split or multiple personality?

I said "witness", not "witless" protection program...

[NW-Bound]

Apparently people like to post here enough to desire multiple accounts. If I were the site owner, I would "monetize" this as follows. The first account is free. The 2nd account would cost something like $100/yr. The 3rd one, $1000/yr. The 4th one, $10K/yr.

Some people get to post, I get the money. Everybody is happy. Seems fair, no?

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack I voted, but I entered an amount that is not at all what we actually spend. Does that help?

I was thinking about that as well. Especially since it applies to singles and couples. Some retirees are single, many are married, and some have kids in the house. I guess it's OK to be curious, but it makes me curious as to why anyone would be interested in such numbers.

Maybe I'll start a poll - flip a coin, was it heads or tails? And yes, we will need a category for 'landed on it's edge', 'rolled under the fridge', 'I don't have a coin, I use rewards credit cards for everything', 'I used my last penny to pay off the mortgage', etc...

-ERD50

[obgyn65]

I have answered although I am not retired yet.

[Independent]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustCurious This is a straw man argument... I do not expect to retire on someone else's budget, and that is not the purpose of this poll. Perhaps this poll is meaningless to you, but it is meant to gather the same information as the Consumer Expenditure Survey that is conducted by the federal bureau of labor statistics each year to determine the total expenditures by households in the U.S. .... Consumer Expenditure Survey Perhaps the federal government engages in a useless exercise each year, and to that extent, this poll may be equally useless.

Not sure why you are trying to duplicate the BLS data.
Maybe you want to know if posters here are "typical" retirees?
Maybe you didn't drill down to see that the BLS has tables that give data for narrower slices of the population?

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.reques...byage/atwo.TXT
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.reques...byage/aone.TXT

[kumquat]

OK, I'll satify the OP's curiosity.

My numbers are meaningless. I've been RE for 5 years. In our biggest spending year it was > $500K. That included about $250K in income tax (sold a bunch of MS stock options) and gave a bundle to the kids. Our most frugal year was around $50K (no vacations, no home repairs, no CG tax liability, no new cars, no nothing).

MMV(aried) YM(ay)2

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustCurious For those of you who are retired, how much do you spend each year? Whether you are single or married, what is your total household spending for the year? You don't have to give a breakdown of every dollar spent, just the total. I am trying to predict some of the questions... before they are asked... yes, please include all spending, in all categories, including income taxes, healthcare, everything.

Hopefully you've searched enough of the keywords in your question to find some other threads to help supply some answers.

For example, this one:
http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...ugh-30818.html

... and these:
http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...0-a-53971.html
http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...ent-55749.html

Do you want a simple answer? Over the last decade, most of the responses have been in a narrow range around $25K/year and $50K/year. But it's a double-humped bell curve with fat tails.

And, of course, you long-time posters will enjoy this classic from the deep-freeze archives:
http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...way-14108.html

[bld999]

I say we change the poll to: "How much horsepower do you really need?" Then we can begin to argue about Torque vs. Horsepower.

[kumquat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bld999 I say we change the poll to: "How much horsepower do you really need?" Then we can begin to argue about Torque vs. Horsepower.

I'm a torque kinda guy.

[Rambler]

Not retired yet...gimme 33 more days!

Budget is north of 100k for next year...way north. Taxes will be a big, very big part of that.

R

[eytonxav]

I wish it was possible to live within some of the lower thresholds on the survey, but when your property tax, out of pocket healthcare costs, homeowners/car insurance exceeds what some are living on annually, there is much room for improvement with respect to frugality