Poll: What is your basic income need (floor) in retirement?

[Bikerdude]

Basic = $32K with Mtg.
Currently spend = $45K including 2K taxes.
In 2 years with SS = 55K including 5K taxes.

Single person no debt except mtg.

[califdreamer]

Scenario with staying in current home and keeping mortgage as is:

1. Low 80 K's (includes mortgage)
2. One person
3. San Diego
4. Working


Scenario, which is under consideration, with selling home, relocating to area w/ less expensive housing and going mortgage-free:

1. Mid-to-high 50 K's (mortgage free)
2. One person
3. Arizona?
4. Retired 8)

I am shooting for something higher to allow for travel, wining & dining, golf, etc.

Amounts above include depreciation/reserve funding for house, car, appliances, etc.

Had to estimate for health insurance cost and taxes.... hope I'm in the ballpark.

[Robert the Red]

1) US$50,000 to avoid worries. Mortgage will be paid off in 5 years, about the time we ER.
2) 2 of us.
3) Washington DC suburb
4) Retiring in 5 years, 3 months (I hope)

$50K is predicated on our day-to-day living expenses averaged over the last 3 years, income taxes, property taxes, and a little extra (the non-worrying part). We LBYM, but not to any kind of extreme. 10+ year old car -- but that's not really frugality, we just like it and only drive about 5000 miles per year, so it's not nearly worn out yet.

[Tom52]

This all makes for interesting reading but ,without including information whether or not you are paying for health care coverage, and how much that costs, it doesn't answer many questions for me.

for me it would be:

1. $70,000 including estimated $15,000 for health care insurance, no mortgage or car payment
2. 2 people
3. Chicago suburb
4. retiring in 5 years unless I get booted out earlier

[Khan]

1 - $25k or less
2 - 1 person, 1 cat, whole bunches of (outdoor)birds and squirrels
3 - semi - rural SW Ohio
4 - Retired near 2 .5 years

If I really had to, I could cut back to $15k or so; but I am on a pension of ~$30k.

[Nords]

1) $18K plus another $3K property taxes and a $23.1K mortgage. It does include $40/month TRICARE health insurance.
2) Two adults and one extremely unhappy teenager. (But she has her own job.)
3) Oahu.
4) ER'd.

Annual pension income of $36K plus the ER portfolio dividends.

http://early-retirement.org/forums/i...6304#msg206304 minus taxes, vacations, tae kwon do, dining out, entertainment, and anything else even remotely resembling fun...

[aggie]

1) pre-tax income minimum floor in today's dollars (identify if this include mortgage or rent)
2) How many people will the income support (e.g. 2 people)
3) area of the country (e.g. midwest, west coast, east coast) plus if you are in a high expense are (e.g. Manhattan)
4) Status retired/working - Are you planning or have actual experience.

1. 63K inclusive of rent (16k health insurance hurts)
2. 2 folks, with a little help to kids
3. Houston
4. Dangerously close to Firing

[haha]

1) $34,000. No mortgage, but total maintenance of $5500 incl. new well pump.
2)1 person
3)Puget Sound
4) Retired

This represents my actual spending, not a hypothetical amount. However, before I would reduce it much I would go back to work. There just isn't much fat there.

Ha

[Spanky]

1. $48K, no mortgage - property tax $4,200 per year.
2. 2 adults, 2 teenagers
3. Minneapolis (Midwest)
4. Working - 4 more years?

[OKLibrarian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom52 This all makes for interesting reading but ,without including information whether or not you are paying for health care coverage, and how much that costs, it doesn't answer many questions for me.

Fair point. Part of why ours was so low is that I'll be staying at MPOW until I'm vested in my health plan and we're covered (free for me, cheap for DH) to 65. Mortgage should also be retired before we are, but I left those numbers in my calculations for extra padding.

[Independent]

1. 34,000 No mortgage, excludes contributions and taxes.
2. 2 adults
3. Midwest - small town
4. Recently retired

This is an average of our actual (inflation adjusted) spending for the last few years, except for a "larger" trip one year that I don't consider basic. I'm still on my former employer's health plan, so that keeps health premiums and out-of-pocket down to a few thousand. The good news is that if we don't take SS until age 66, our combined SS benefit will be about 36,000 (and that's tax-free if it's your only income).

[kramer]

1) $24K/year
2) 1 person
3) In the USA more than 50 miles from a coast renting
4) Recently semi-retired but not yet relocated

Here is a barebones budget that I could live with for a long time:

280 EatOut/Groceries/Entertainment
045 Gas/transit
000 Auto principal (public transport if car dies)
080 Auto maintenance/insurance (I am driving less, too)
045 CellPhone (and only cell phone)
080 Internet/CableTV
080 Utilities [electric/laundry] (water/garbage included in rent)
085 Travel
400 Health (wild card)
650 Housing/Rent 1 br apartment
200 Misc/Cash/Gifts
===============
$1945/month = $23340/year. So I made it $24K. Income tax would add a little more.

My actual budget is considerably more than this.

RE: Health insurance. My premiums for high deductible private policy are $85/month meaning actual total post-tax health costs probably will average about $200/month in the short term. I put $400 in budget above to account for some inflation in the future.

For $3K more per year I could take a 1-2 month overseas international vacation each year, too.

Kramer

[lazygood4nothinbum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lazygood4nothinbum 1) think i'm paying off mortgage so will be $35k including all the goodies plus about another $10k/yr for domestic travel over next few years. after that possibly a few years living in third world with international travel and after that maybe a liveaboard cruising life.

that $35k includes health insurance plus it budgets the full deductible of $2800 which i doubt i'll ever use. for emergency belt tightening i could deduct from allowances for auto gas, tires & maintenance & miscellaneous, home improvements, gym, restaurants, clothing, technology, other miscellaneous cash on hand, bringing budget down to about $30k barebones while keeping those bones well insured.

i don't require a lot of money to play with, but if i had to live completely barebones, i would just go back to work.

[tryan]

1) 45k will just about keep the bill collectors at bay. Want fun ... add 25k more.
2) 4 people
3) north of Boston
4) retired (Oct 2005)

[Celany]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Masterblaster By the way, my post wasn't too serious. My personal standards are considerably higher than that. However considering that most of the world lives under very simple conditions, the point is, is that what we really need is very very little. The rest is up to you and your standards.

ah, sorry, as I've probably made clear in other posts, I'm a bit of a nutrition nut.

I get a little crazy, as there are lots of people out there that think a diet of rice & beans alone (or mcD's alone) is more than good enough to stay healthy.

I do agree though, that when I look at my own retirement calculations, I want to have enough to say, travel every year. but how long I travel/to where/what kind of hotels I stay in/etc would be depandant on if I scrimped elsewhere (ate out less, bought less truffle oil), found good deals, wanted a shorter/more luxurious trip or a longer/more frugal trip, etc...

I guess the important thing for me is to finish early enough to enjoy it a lot, but still have enough to make sure that, barring catastrophe, I'll be in enjoyable shape.

[HFWR]

Conjecture at this point, but my rock bottom budget would be ~$25k (with mortgage and subsidized health insurance). Would be shooting for ~$40k "income".

1
Republic of Texas
?

[bosco]

1) $31,000 but that is FLOOR. Will actually start out at twice that with significant travel and discretionary. Mortgage paid off.

2) 2 people

3) Western Canada

4) 2 more months to work

[Lusitan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chinaco 1) pre-tax income minimum floor in today's dollars (identify if this include mortgage or rent) 2) How many people will the income support (e.g. 2 people) 3) area of the country (e.g. midwest, west coast, east coast) plus if you are in a high expense are (e.g. Manhattan) 4) Status retired/working - Are you planning or have actual experience.

1) 36K (no mortgage)
2) 2 adults, at least 1 child (probably another 1 or 2)
3) currently east coast (FIRE may be Europe)
4) working and planning

[kaudrey]

1) Floor would probably be $45K (house paid off), will need health insurance. Add $10K a year for the first 5-10 years for traveling.
2) 1 and a few animals (I'll add more if I add another person!)
3) Washington, DC, but will likely move to a lower cost area
4) working and planning.

[loosechickens]

As I look at these pages of "rock bottom" budgets, I realize that we in this country are REALLY going to have some big surprises in what we consider "necessary" should really hard times hit.

Maybe it's because we have lived for years off and on in Third World countries, and also at periods in our younger days in a "back to the land" hippie style, but the things that most middle-class people consider necessities are not only not necessites to most of the world, they aren't even necessities for maybe 40 or 50 million people here in the U.S.

In answer to a couple of comments that were made regarding our bare bones budget of $10,000 or less.......the question was asked in the OP what one would HAVE to have, yet most of you seem to have assumed that even in hard times you would still have a similar lifestyle to what you enjoy today, just more carefully budgeted. A budget that would consist of such things as full health insurance, cell phones, internet, comfortable suburban living with air conditioning, etc. So we may, indeed, be talking some apples and oranges here.

I notice that many of you seem to have the type of health insurance that pays for most everything. We have NEVER had that, and don't today. We have always carried catastrophic health insurance with a high deductible, sometimes $5,000 per person per calendar year and sometimes an even higher deductible. Regular medical care we just wrote a check. In twenty years, we never needed to use our catastrophic insurance policy. We just self insured for the small stuff.

This year I crossed over the great divide and now have Medicare. With my Part B deduction, supplemental insurance and prescription drug coverage (heck, I went for the good stuff), it costs about $250 per month. For the first time in my life, I have insurance for regular stuff like doctor visits. My husband, who is younger, at 57 years old, pays $149 per month for a $5,000 deductible policy. Were hard times to hit, I would probably drop the supplemental and drug coverage. Maybe I would just drop back to the regular old part of Medicare that is free. After all, we're talking rock bottom necessity here.

One question I find myself having is that why so many people, with apparently seven figure investment portfolios would feel they had to pay for insurance that would cover every little doctor bill. We self insure for everything that wouldn't cripple us financially, and even with unlimited money would never have paid huge bills every month for "full" insurance. Guess many of you think differently.

For example, we have never carried collision insurance on our vehicles (other than the motorhome when new when that loss could have caused a $200,000+ problem). At this point, now that it is nine years old, that risk is lessened because of depreciation, so we are considering dropping collision on that as well. For a regular vehicle where the maximum loss would be smaller, we've never carried anything but liability. And since over thirty years, we've never smushed one, at this point we are way ahead, and could cover the cost of a brand new car probably just in saved collision and comprehensive premiums. And if we added in the investment potential that those unspent insurance premiums represent, maybe even several cars.

Sometimes it seems to us that Americans want and need to feel that they are insured against EVERYTHING. My mother even took out trip insurance for trips that were going to cost her less than $2,000. Just seemed silly to us. Life is full of risks. That's just part of life.

It's actually hard to find a better diet than rice and beans, if the rice is brown rice, and the rice and beans are supplemented with some fruits and veggies. We've known folks for many years living in Mexico who eat little but rice, beans, tortillas, tomatos, onions and chiles, and are apparently quite healthy and could work our butts into the ground.

We are an incredibly spoiled society. The things we feel are necessary are unimaginable luxuries to most of the world. We may have some big adjustments necessary someday.

When I posited a $10,000 per year budget, I was envisioning a time when the market would be way down, companies reducing or eliminating dividends, etc., and wondering just how little we could spend and how we could manage without having to sell investments if our income stream really dried up. I was assuming our situation which is that we have adequate tools, etc. to do a great deal for ourselves, and even to earn or barter those skills with others. Some might be less prepared with useful skills.

That budget would assume a mostly vegetarian diet, low cost basic, but nutrional foods, thrift store or remade clothing, simple pleasures, little travel, etc. but adequate nutrition, fun in our lives, friends, and enjoyment. Very little money is necessary for that.

Please note: my comments are not meant to disparage any other's choices, but just to clarify that our thinking seems to be coming from a different place. If the bottom fell out, believe me, I wouldn't think I still needed to have a cell phone, high speed internet, full health insurance or anything like those things. I would be looking at food, clothing and shelter at levels necessary for survival and hopefully even some degree of comfort, but certainly not looking to maintain a standard middle-class lifestyle.

Obviously, I hope it would never come to that, but it sure helps you sleep at night when you realize that the tiniest percentage of what you have today is what is REALLY necessary to have.

LooseChickens