audreyh1
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I just took a look at our actual spending rate YTD, and we are running over 20% below last year's actual spending! I knew we had cut back a little here and there, but I'm still surprised. It doesn't really feel like we've cut back that much.
I also reviewed spending over the past 4 years to re-evaluate what I have been using as our expected annual expenses for planning purposes. From this I also refined what would be a reasonable conservative budget (based on our lowest actual expenses in the past, not really bare bones), and it is about 70% of what I have been using for our projected expenditures. Bare bones would go below that even - maybe 55% of the planned budget.
This projected budget I have always considered our "flush" budget with plenty of padding for special expenses, gifts to family, etc. This number is still almost 9% above the max we have spent in any given year over the past 9 years.
As our investment portfolio has shrunk over the past year, I decided that for planning purposes I needed a more reasonable "moderate" budget based on the averages of the past 4 years plus a wee bit extra. This "moderate" budget is 84% of the "flush" budget and would, at current levels, be about a 3% draw from the portfolio once taxes are included.
There have been discussions over the past 6 months of "bare bones" expenses versus other budget projections. I thought maybe some of my numbers might be useful.
Audrey
I also reviewed spending over the past 4 years to re-evaluate what I have been using as our expected annual expenses for planning purposes. From this I also refined what would be a reasonable conservative budget (based on our lowest actual expenses in the past, not really bare bones), and it is about 70% of what I have been using for our projected expenditures. Bare bones would go below that even - maybe 55% of the planned budget.
This projected budget I have always considered our "flush" budget with plenty of padding for special expenses, gifts to family, etc. This number is still almost 9% above the max we have spent in any given year over the past 9 years.
As our investment portfolio has shrunk over the past year, I decided that for planning purposes I needed a more reasonable "moderate" budget based on the averages of the past 4 years plus a wee bit extra. This "moderate" budget is 84% of the "flush" budget and would, at current levels, be about a 3% draw from the portfolio once taxes are included.
There have been discussions over the past 6 months of "bare bones" expenses versus other budget projections. I thought maybe some of my numbers might be useful.
Audrey