I'm curious how people think about budgeting over these long time horizons when ER. We are 47/53, but have young children and not yet ready for the 'downsizing' phase of life.
I have a decent handle on our current expenses and am happy to report that we were well under my 'low spend' scenario for 2017, even with a few areas that could use some significant trimming. That said, we didn't have any big one-time expenses last year.
Any good guides you've come across in estimating spend as kids grow? How are you managing those larger lumpy expenses like home maintenance/improvements, cars, etc when you think about budgeting for the future?
I've basically assumed we spend ~15% of home value annually on maintenance and improvements, but obviously this ends up being somewhat discretionary, so can help with short term adjustments to withdrawal rate.
I'm at a bit of a loss to projecting spend for kids and have tried to offset this uncertainty with conservatism in the budget, but if anyone has suggestions for resources or real life spend, would love to hear it. I think we have a good handle on education expenses, but it's the things like activities, birthday parties, etc... for an upper middle class life that I can see really adding up in an unexpected way.
I have a decent handle on our current expenses and am happy to report that we were well under my 'low spend' scenario for 2017, even with a few areas that could use some significant trimming. That said, we didn't have any big one-time expenses last year.
Any good guides you've come across in estimating spend as kids grow? How are you managing those larger lumpy expenses like home maintenance/improvements, cars, etc when you think about budgeting for the future?
I've basically assumed we spend ~15% of home value annually on maintenance and improvements, but obviously this ends up being somewhat discretionary, so can help with short term adjustments to withdrawal rate.
I'm at a bit of a loss to projecting spend for kids and have tried to offset this uncertainty with conservatism in the budget, but if anyone has suggestions for resources or real life spend, would love to hear it. I think we have a good handle on education expenses, but it's the things like activities, birthday parties, etc... for an upper middle class life that I can see really adding up in an unexpected way.