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Old 08-04-2012, 01:04 PM   #41
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Wow! I look at the above budget, and everything is listed. I just did not see travel expenses. But still...
I don't travel. Hate it, had my fill it with megacorp
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Old 08-04-2012, 01:07 PM   #42
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Eh, I started a thread a while back about how work-related travel simply does not compare to personal travel for leisure. For the latter, I would gladly pay my own money, while for work, heck they would have to pay me to do it.

Oops. Forgot that they did! Well, I meant that they would have to pay even more, but since they didn't, I just wouldn't go.
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Old 08-04-2012, 01:08 PM   #43
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Love the line item for WalMart
Where I am at Wally-world is pretty much it. There is a homedepot and a kroger. That item is mostly misc one time crap I could cut, not an ongoing expense. I think it was a couple of fans and some space heaters.
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Old 08-04-2012, 02:39 PM   #44
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Which low-flow shower head do you use? I was trying several different ones about a year ago for a friend and only found one that I really liked. It did do a good job of saving money and still giving a comfortable shower -- until I tried it at my place (the water pressure at my place must have been lower). The cost of water usage is already paid for in my monthly maintenance fee (condo), but I don't like to waste if I don't have to. So, instead of a low-flow, I have a full flowing shower head that has a shut valve button. I can use that to have almost none to very low flow as I soap up and then back to full as I rinse off. Best of both worlds. Also, one can get a shut off valve (for about $10) that installs between the shower pipe and shower head if the head doesn't come with a shut off valve.

A good percentage of the light bulbs at my place are LED. None of them have failed yet. Initially cost is high (though prices on the way down), but I really like them.
I don't know what kind of low-flow shower heads they were. Picked them up at Home Depot. They were very inexpensive. I just wanted to try them out and I've really liked them.

I like the idea of your shut off valve on the shower! If I didn't have the tankless water heater I would look into that. With the tankless, I set the temperature to the right shower temp. and then just turn on the hot water and turn it off to soap up. I live in the southeast, so when it's hot like right now, I don't even use the hot water to shower. Since I am growing a lot of my own veggies and watering the garden as necessary, I try and cut down on water usage where ever possible. My next water saving effort will be to get some rain barrels to catch the rain from the gutters.
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Old 08-04-2012, 02:51 PM   #45
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I don't know what kind of low-flow shower heads they were. Picked them up at Home Depot. They were very inexpensive. I just wanted to try them out and I've really liked them.

I like the idea of your shut off valve on the shower! If I didn't have the tankless water heater I would look into that. With the tankless, I set the temperature to the right shower temp. and then just turn on the hot water and turn it off to soap up. I live in the southeast, so when it's hot like right now, I don't even use the hot water to shower. Since I am growing a lot of my own veggies and watering the garden as necessary, I try and cut down on water usage where ever possible. My next water saving effort will be to get some rain barrels to catch the rain from the gutters.
The low-flow shower head that I liked is from Home Depot. Delta brand. Though it's a low flow, the showerhead put out bigger drops of water so it would keep one's body warmer. It really did do a great job of cutting down water usage. Unfortunately, when used at my shower I'd still get too much of a chill. Now, I'm used to the shut off valve. I usually put the water to a moderate flow as I soap up so the net effect probably isn't that different than a low flow.
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Old 08-04-2012, 02:57 PM   #46
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Hmm... No need for hot water to shower. Gardener who needs to water his plants... Lemme think...

How about an outside shower over the veggie area? The waste water would not be too difficult to recycle.
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Old 08-04-2012, 03:20 PM   #47
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What's with the car maintenance for a 3 and 10 year old car? That includes gas as well, right?

1) Increase the house deductible.
2) Drop the him/her fund to $250 each (-$62).
3) Cut the cable (-$80) and use Hulu or Netflix (+$8-15) instead.
4) Your electric seems high (how many kwH?). Blow in some attic insulation. Edit: From experience, a lot of this is probably from the pool.
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Old 08-04-2012, 03:59 PM   #48
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I guess it's a "to each his own" thing when it comes to temp settings on the thermostat, but according to the posts, it seems like most people really like the temp down in the summer (someone was at 75 degrees). We're in Florida, and I guess it doesn't matter where you are, we keep ours set at 78 all the time during the warm and hot season. Anything lower than that and I get chills. In the cool season (Jan and Feb) when the heat pump needs to heat the house, we set the thermostat at 70 and bump it up or down depending on how DW is feeling. Most of the time we use our fireplace electric insert and it really does a good job.
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Old 08-04-2012, 04:13 PM   #49
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Healthcare insurance is the elephant in the room and dwarfs all other possible costs. Is there any opportunity to negotiate this cost? The average cost per capita of healthcare in the US is somewhere between $7000 and $8000. If there are two of you, it seems you are not getting a fair deal, unless you have expensive preexisting conditions, or pay for concierge service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...PP)_per_capita

FWIW, my total personal income tax bill for 2011 was ~ 50% of your health insurance costs. I did pay a healthcare premium of ~$700.
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Old 08-04-2012, 04:40 PM   #50
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If you take out the budgeted taxes on dividends and interest of $12,000, your living expenses drop to $72K a year. There - does that make you feel a lot better? Clearly you can only trim this "expense" by making less money.

I only look at my income as after income taxes, and thus my expenses/budget is also after taxes. Kind of like when I had a paycheck and my income was after payroll taxes.
Agree. I Think budgets work better on an after tax basis. Taxes are really out of your control once your income level is set. We treat taxes as an offset to income and know we can only spend the net after tax amount.
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Old 08-04-2012, 04:54 PM   #51
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I keep reading threads where people can live on $30 - $50k per year. My budget is $84k and I think its pretty bare bones.

Home is fully paid - 1600 sq ft. No car payments (cars are 3 and 10 years old). Boat is a 16 ft jon boat - nothing fancy. Dog expenses are high - even tho she's only 6 yo she has some health challenges.

"Future one time purchases" budget includes big ticket items - car replacements, applicance replacements. Ongoing purchases includes replacements of smaller items (televisions, small appliances) and purchase of new things (towels, books, etc).

I could probably take 10k out of this budget (dog 2k, vacation 3k, boat 1k, cellphones 1k, entertainment 1k, pocket money 2k) but thats all I see.

What am I doing wrong ?
We live on about 16k. Our house is a little bit smaller than yours. Ours budget looks like this in the Midwest.
Taxes/insurance 275
health insurance 105
utilities 250
eating at home 400
eating out 200
running an old car 150
I looked at your budget it looks like death by a thousand cuts as some call it. A lot of small holes can sink a large ship. I would look very careful at all your small bills. We live on less than your health insurance. You might try to shop around more on that one. It also depends were you live I think all posters should tell what state they live in it would help at budget time.
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Old 08-04-2012, 07:46 PM   #52
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What am I doing wrong ?
I don't know if you are doing anything wrong, but I can tell a few things you are doing right:

Quote:
"Future one time purchases" budget includes big ticket items - car replacements, applicance replacements. Ongoing purchases includes replacements of smaller items (televisions, small appliances) and purchase of new things (towels, books, etc).
Many of those posts you may have seen with much lower spending are not accounting for these things. I can recall things like 'Oh, my car is paid for - no monthly payment!' (OK, where does the money come from to replace it?). Or 'Oh, we needed a new water heater last year, but that came out of our 'emergency fund'!' (OK, where does the money come from to rebuild the emergency fund?). And so on.

It's smart to question everything and see if there are opportunities to save. But as others have said, if it is of value, and you can afford it, what's the problem? Life is to be lived.

-ERD50
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Old 08-04-2012, 08:19 PM   #53
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Many of those posts you may have seen with much lower spending are not accounting for these things. I can recall things like 'Oh, my car is paid for - no monthly payment!' (OK, where does the money come from to replace it?). Or 'Oh, we needed a new water heater last year, but that came out of our 'emergency fund'!' (OK, where does the money come from to rebuild the emergency fund?). And so on.

-ERD50
I believe I have accounted for those items. I didn't include it in the budget because I'm not currently spending it. The budget reflects retirement spending not retirement income. I agree that if you have not planned for those unexpected/replacement cost then you have an issue.
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Old 08-05-2012, 03:16 AM   #54
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I agree with Katsmeow in their post below.

I live on $3k a month on average and spend thousands of dollars a year on free clinics and trips abroad. And I feel like I live like a king... All the rest is saved. Quite frugal indeed !

If there anyway you can cut your healthcare expenses ? You may find cheaper insurance policies and quotes.

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I don't think you are doing anything wrong exactly but there are a lot of things that affect budgets including where you live, what your lifestyle is and what standard of living you want. I've looked at many of the really low budgets around here and sometimes those budgets leave out expenses that are more irregular in nature such as your one time expenses.
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Old 08-05-2012, 05:21 AM   #55
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Another idea is to look here and compare where your costs make sense according to your income: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.reques...010/income.txt

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What am I doing wrong ?
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Old 08-05-2012, 07:48 AM   #56
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Here is what 41K a year spending looks like
Birds, hummers and songbirds and quail
Pets, 4 dogs 3 cats and an African spurred tortoise
Taxes, property only
Telephone, land and pay as you go cell

Grasshopper 2011.JPG
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Old 08-05-2012, 08:19 AM   #57
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I agree with what appears to be the consensus opinion: you aren't doing anything wrong and HI is a killer. FYIW, my HI budget is pretty much identical to yours. One question I haven't seen in this thread: will you still need life insurance when you FIRE? If your assets are sufficient to fund retirement for two, won't they be sufficient to provide for your beneficiary?
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Old 08-05-2012, 10:06 AM   #58
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Maybe I should start with what is your income? If it is really high you might not need to cut back.
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Old 08-05-2012, 11:51 AM   #59
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My budget for basic expenses is about $2200 a month. If I include replacement costs and maintenance on cars and maintenance on the house over time it would work out to be about $2900. Included $400 for health care. Just estimates at this point though. I have not been retired long enough to validate.
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Old 08-05-2012, 12:08 PM   #60
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Thanks everyone. The budget I posted is my post-retirement budget (not retired yet but hoping to get there in a year). Based on this budget I need to work another 2 -3 years. If I had overstated it (which doesn't seem to be the case !) by 6 - 8k then I could retire this year or next (looking for 90% confidence level of my portfolio lasting to age 95).

HI is based upon my own estimate as we both have pre-existing conditions. Right now I am partially covered through work and haven't yet seriously shopped for individual HI.

I'm sure I've overstated by about 1 - 2k per year but I see that as my cushion.

Looks like I'm left with the same choices I've had for awhile (a) assume the risk of my portfolio running dry at 85 and needing to live on SSI from there on. (b) suck it up and w*rk through 2014. (c) give up the dog and vacations (not gonna happen !).
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