Poll: Standard of living before & after retirement.

[Midpack]

Stemming from another thread. Often discussed, but I don't remember a poll to attempt to quantify. Do you plan to spend more, less or about the same in retirement as the years preceding retirement.

 

[Original Wally]

Hard to say. We are still frugal, but we do things we didn't before. So, we Frugally live it up, I suppose.

(e.g. more travel, BUT always on a budget)

 

[Gumby]

We plan to continue our life of unbridled hedonism.

 

[ER Eddie]

I had a little trouble answering, because I am frugal now and will be later, and I expect my expenses will drop a bit, but not 20% or more. On the other hand, I will be paying out of pocket for health insurance, so that's a big increase in expenses, but not really (I imagine) tied to the intent of your question. In the end I picked "smoothed," because my basic spending will probably remain about where it is, all things (except health insurance) considered.

 

[Animorph]

Same budget we've had for many years. Hopefully we've been conservative planning retirement and will have some extra to spend. But that's not in the budget.

 

[Meadbh]

I voted less. I have scaled back or cancelled a number of personal and professional expenses, including cable, malpractice insurance, disability insurance (I am converting one policy to LTCI), professional society memberships, airport lounge membership card, dry-cleaning, and housecleaning service. However, some of these budget altering moves have no direct effect on my standard of living!

 

[caninelover]

I voted less. I have scaled back or cancelled a number of personal and professional expenses, including cable, malpractice insurance, disability insurance (I am converting one policy to LTCI), professional society memberships, airport lounge membership card, dry-cleaning, and housecleaning service. However, some of these budget altering moves have no direct effect on my standard of living!

I voted about the same, but I do think Meadbh's comments are true. I just expect that there will be some additional expenses (eg health insurance) that will take the place of expenses that will be gone or reduced in retirement.

 

[Alan]

I voted more than 20% of pre-retirement expenses.

We have now 3 years of post-retirement spending and this 4th year is set to be highest yet. We are really enjoying spending money on travel but are still well within our means and well below our target WR.

 

[Katsmeow]

I answered frugal but it doesn't really capture it. During the last 10 year before DH retired we had a high income so we would almost certainly reduce our spending after retirement. The other thing is that due to some specific child-related reasons we had some unusually high expenses (for example one of our children attended a very expensive therapeutic school for several years - he is in college now and his tuition expenses now are way less than we spent for schooling for him over a period of several years).


Also, some spending is less but it isn't really exactly being more frugal. For example, we also had a much larger home (we had 6 people living in it at one time) and due to size and location it was more expensive. We live in a smaller home now and we live a bit more off the beaten path so our housing expense are less than half what they were say 5 years ago. However, I would say our overall quality of home and neighborhood really hasn't changed. So while that expense is much less it really hasn't impaired our lifestyle.

 

[Alan]

That's a good point Kats, it all depends where you start your comparison from.

5 years before retiring our children were off the purse strings, we had sold our big house and moved into somewhere much smaller, so my comparison was against a pre-ER budget with many expenses already reduced, and only a few weeks to go away on vacation.

 

[mickeyd]

Don't really have a spending plan or watch over standard of living. We just live the same as before and always seem to have plenty of cash to do anything that we want to do and not fret over financial matters at all.

 

[Midpack]

Using 'last 10 years' was probably longer than I should have suggested. Didn't want a comparison to last year or some too short period, nor too long and therefore no longer representative. Oh well, live and learn...

 

[freebird5825]

I voted Smoothed.

The only difference between my spending patterns before and after FIRE is I have to plan a bit more in advance for large purchases or vacations. For example, I've saved up enough for an indoor hot tub, to be purchased and installed in the very near future.

At age 54.5, I am not drawing on my retirement portfolio at all. Between my survivor pension and a fixed annuity, I have plenty to live on.

Mr B contributing 50% of household expenses is even better, for both of us in both directions.

In less than a year, Mr B will draw his SS.
In 1.5 years, I will draw my own deferred pension.
Let the party begin

 

[Live And Learn]

Same budget we've had for many years. Hopefully we've been conservative planning retirement and will have some extra to spend. But that's not in the budget.

ditto

 

[ERD50]

We spend about the same, but if I look at the title of the thread, I'd have to say my Standard of Living is much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much HIGHER!

-ERD50

 

[obgyn65]

I can't vote from my Ipad. Can't even see the survey, not sure why. Anyway, I plan to spend a bit more while FIREd than what I am spending at the moment. The main reason will be more travel.

 

[scrabbler1]

One requirement for me to ER was to have no change to my day-to-day lifestyle. Another requirement was to have a surplus or cushion of investment income over expenses so if something unforeseen arises I can cover it without going into a panic.

Compared to my expenses from my last year of working, my ER expenses were roughly the same. The elimination of my commutation expenses and FICA taxes were roughly offset by the additional health insurance costs.

 

[easysurfer]

I put down frugal, but I was pretty frugal during my last ten years of w*rking anyhow.

But I can think of some examples. While w*rking, I religiously had cable and monthly mobile plans as everyone else did too. While in ER, I had to ask myself, do I really need those services and found I really did not.

 

[ohyes]

We are living on about 18% less. Some months go better than others. We know we can cut out some fun and not have to dip into savings. We are not there (not skeered enough yet) to do that....so we take $300-$500 out of savings most months.

Dunkin Donuts iced coffee, eating out a few times each week and happy hours can add up. Wild retired teacher living stuff.

We are enjoying retirement very much.

 

[ocdokie]

I FEEL as if we're being much more frugal (very little eating out, one car instead of two, downsized from big house to tiny, no more "treats" like massages (sob!)), but we're actually spending quite a bit more than before we retired. This is due solely to our spending $0 on health insurance while working, and $12K yearly for it now.

 

[jimnjana]

We're living it up... We are still not tapping any retirement savings, and are actually adding a little now. It was not part of the plan, but plans change. I guess we are still living beneath our means, just not as frugal as we were when we were working.

 

[Rambler]

I voted more frugal. For starters, I won't need to spend some $4000 a year on suits, $1500 a year or so on dry cleaning, $200 a pop for nice business shoes, don't have utility bills in two countries, so far the cost of food is about 1/3 what we were spending in Tokyo, won't be renting a car every two months for $300 a pop to stop by and visit my family during round-the-world business trips.

On the other side of the coin, we are so far spending around $350 a month more in gasoline...had a company car and company gas in Tokyo, and our home here is in the country...nearest little town is 8 miles away. I have been working on a variety of projects to clean up our place in N Cal, which is costing a bit but still not offsetting the savings. That said, I will be slowing down a bit on the projects lest I get carried away!

R

 

[CyclingInvestor]

More, mainly on vacations, eating out, electronic toys.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

We will be spending less money but actually have a higher standard of living. We have more time now to price shop, look for free things to do, cut expenses, DIY fun stuff, probably downsize + lower COL area eventually.

Doing things like taking the dog hiking at the local state park, free day at the local museums, grilling out, riding our bikes and going out to ethnic restaurants for lunch are things we enjoy and have more time for but don't really cost much money - The Thomas Stanley cheap date model - A Cheap Date.

 

[MichaelB]

We are definitely spending on ourselves much more now than during most of my working years. We are also enjoying it much more.