How Did You Do On Your Expense Budget in 2010?

[Danmar]

We really blew our 2010 budget- over by 20%. Must do better in 2011. Major overages in health care, gifts, travel, and auto. How did you guys do?

 

[bbbamI]

Looks like we'll be right on budget. Maybe spent a hair less.

 

[LOL!]

My kid did not get that college scholarship and we paid off the mortgage, so we totally blew our budget by a factor of 2 at least.

 

[Moemg]

I came in $13,000 under budget despite buying a car,traveling and doing some remodeling . I'll just roll that over into next year .

 

[Alan]

Almost exactly 10% over budget, but that was mainly due to 2 unplanned trips to England. My Dad died Dec 16th, 2009 and airfare and other expenses on CC was paid for in January, plus FIL died in June so again we had airfares at 24 hour notice in peak travel time.

We will be over budget again in 2011 as we plan on a 6 month stay in England, but the expenses will easily come out of the inheritance money and those monies were never in our plans.

May be we'll be on budget in 2012...

 

[REWahoo]

11% over, due primarily to [-]buying too many toys[/-] [-]adding granite counter tops in the kitchen and master bath[/-] replacing the HVAC system.

 

[easysurfer]

I came in about 7% under budget. I'm a bit surprised as some categories (dental--toothache from h*ll, automobile repair) I'm sure I exceeded my budget.

 

[Rustward]

I put items into one of three buckets -- monthly for expenses that occur every month, yearly for the non-monthly ones, and reserves for other items, like HVAC replacement.

Quite a bit under on monthly and yearly, and no major expenses except for one truck repair, but hey, it's a '98, so under on reserves -- the budget needs tweaking.

Happy New Year.

 

[grasshopper]

2K over or 5%, new [-]cat scratching posts[/-] furniture, and ceiling for the Chiricahua room.

 

[NW-Bound]

I do not have a budget yet. If my part-time work brings in good money, I splurge. In bad years, I fretted when I had to withdraw from my stash. For years, the investment accounts have been for "deposit only".

I will keep the part-time work for a while until I can get myself into the "distribution" mode.

 

[scrabbler1]

Excluding taxes, I came in about 4% over budget.

The hot summer boosted my electric bill, the end came to my unusually good deal on cable TV, I needed some computer parts, my dental expenses came in a little high, and I boosted the liability limits on my car insurance policy. None of these items cost me more than a few hundred dollars but collectively they were nearly $1,000.

I excluded taxes because they only exceeded my budgeted amount if I had some unexpected income via taxable dividends or cap gain distributions, the latter of which I had. I reinvested the (short term) cap gains, giving me more mutual fund shares, but still have to pay taxes on them.

 

[brewer12345]

What budget?

 

[Alan]

What budget?

So speaks someone still working I can remember those days...

 

[Nords]

What budget?

I did one of those in January but haven't really looked at it since... guess I'll be taking a look at it tonight.

 

[TromboneAl]

We were supposed to spend $53,000 and we spent $36,000. I'll try harder next year.

 

[Moemg]

We were supposed to spend $53,000 and we spent $36,000. I'll try harder next year.

Maybe buy a pop up camper ?

 

[bizlady]

Came in about 1K under budget-- important as this is the third year we have "lived" comfortably but not extravagently on the planned retirement budget- and we take the plunge starting in April 2011! Have spent most of today tweaking for next year, as some expenses will change...

 

[brewer12345]

So speaks someone still working I can remember those days...

I just do not have the time (and willingness) to track a budget closely while I am commuting 3+ hours a day to a full time job and chasing kids in my spare time. I pay the retirement accounts first and leave it at that. Obviously that will have to change when we transition to ESR.

 

[bbbamI]

Maybe buy a pop up camper ?

A new pair of pants?

 

[Alan]

I just do not have the time (and willingness) to track a budget closely while I am commuting 3+ hours a day to a full time job and chasing kids in my spare time. I pay the retirement accounts first and leave it at that. Obviously that will have to change when we transition to ESR.

Believe me, I know how that goes

Coming to the end of my first year of retirement and first shot at seeing how we did against the post work target spending.

 

[Lisa99]

Under budget in every category except gifts.

This is our first year to practice living on expected retirement income and while I hoped we could spend XX amount on gifts, as usual we got carried away buying for the grandkids...but we always pay retirement funding first so no harm, no foul.

 

[W2R]

I came out under budget for the year (don't have my spreadsheet here so I can't give an exact number yet), but the amazing thing to me is that $1K of my savings was in December!

I just noticed that this morning that I spent $1K less in December than I had expected to spend. I am still mystified as to how that came to be, but my bank balance is what it is.

I'll have to sit down and analyze what on earth happened between November 30th and December 31st, to lower my spending so much.

 

[Sue J]

Rough guesstimate is about 14% under budget since DH retired June 1. We had a major purchase of new replacement windows which came out of savings that is not included in that. The cash had been in savings a long time.

A couple of times we went over on groceries or gifts but rarely on anything else.

Feels great to know we can still save.

One factor in this is that we stopped any withholding when DH retired. He was over withheld while still employed and between that and the $1500 credit for the windows, I knew we would still get a refund.

I expected to start withholding again in Jan. 2011, but my pre-planning for 2011 includes using the Retirement Saver's Credit for the first time. Our income has dropped so much that we can finally use that and it will have a nice impact on our 2011 tax liability.

 

[Alan]

I'll have to sit down and analyze what on earth happened between November 30th and December 31st, to lower my spending so much.

I'll bet those cold New Orleans winter nights must simply fly by in the W2R household

Good luck with your accounting and all the very best for 2011

 

[NW-Bound]

I don't recall W2R making recent posts about eating out. Could it be that simple?