After you FIRED and retired, were there expenses you immediately cut or stopped?

[Montecfo]

I think clothing budget went up as DW needed retirement clothes! But overall will be lower. Mine certainly is.

Some things went up like business subscriptions and cell phone no longer reimbursed by company.

I did cut insurance costs by cancelling LTD and one of two term life insurance policies.

Gas and lunch spending plummetted automatically.

Of course we spend a lot more on travel but can be more opportunistic on when we travel.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

Right off the bat - no more job and commute costs (lunches out, dry cleaners, clothes, gas, train fares); no more small business expenses, including the overhead of having our own retirement plan; no more need to save for retirement; lower SS and income taxes; and no more need for disability and life insurance; less carry out because we have time to cook; and time to do our own taxes now.

Then we had time to hack all our expenses - changed insurance deductibles, dropped the landline, went around with a Kill a Watt, changed hair stylists, replaced some appliances with more energy efficient ones, LED lights inside, solar lights outside and probably a hundred or more other small changes that allowed us to live better (or at least the same) for less money. It all really added up. I wish we'd made time for this before we retired. We could have retired even earlier.

 

[Sojourner]

After you FIRED and retired, were there expenses you immediately cut or stopped?

• Eating lunch out
• Commuting costs (tolls, fuel)
• Monthly parking fees
• Buying clothes for work
• Expensive, postpaid cellphone plan

 

[steelyman]

These are all good replies. I’ll echo that contributions to workplace retirement plans (in my case, maxing out both 403(b) and 457 plans) made a big difference once stopped.

My final year was a partial one (I left in August) and I still contributed to the annual limit. That was worthwhile (temporary) “pain”.

 

[rodi]

When I first retired I was very nervous about whether I had "enough". I went through methodically looking at recurring expenses. Changed cellphone plan from Verizon, to Ting, to T-mobile 55+. (Note 4 of us on the plan since we still have college age kids). Renegotiated cable. Shopped insurance. Switched land line to magic jack.

We were never huge on eating out, and I brown bagged it to work most days... but we really stepped up our home cooking after retirement. DH is a great cook so we got competitive about who could make the best meal. That led to even fewer meals out. (And we tend to eat out lunch, split entrees, etc - so even cheaper.)

Other things were less intentional... Less gas used, fewer (much!) new clothes. No dry cleaning. And having the time to shop for value allowed us to improve our travel for the same budget we had before we retired.

 

[Dash man]

I cut a telephone line I used for work. Contributions to 401k stopped and social security and Medicare taxes stopped. Paying for my son’s college stopped around then too, but contributions to 529 plans have started again for grandkids.
Overall expenses increased with more travel, health insurance, a wedding to pay for (they are now getting divorced [emoji22]).

 

[Stormy Kromer]

I eliminated the 1.5% fee that my FA was charging me for arranging a pile of mutual funds that could never come close to the S&P 500 in its best year. That saved me the most by FAR.

I FIRED 6 years ago and haven't spent much on clothes except socks and underwear.

Drive a pickup and car with a total combined miles over 300,000.

Bought a $300 Pit Boss smoker and eat like a king on venison and elk with vegetables from my big garden.

No cable except for netflix. I do have sirius XM radio in the house and wouldn't live without it. I have mobile antenna to put in the car cuz I am too cheap to buy an extra subscription for the vehicles.

I'm living large. In a modest way.

 

[Ronstar]

Clothes, gasoline, lunches. I haven’t bought any dress pants, shirts or shoes since I retired 8 years ago. No longer have a commute. Used to eat lunch out every day when working. Very seldom eat lunch now.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

First thing I did was get rid of the landline. That's the one thing that stands out upon thinking about it. Of course I moved to a place with a lower cost of living as I could never retire in so cal.

 

[Souschef]

Travel!!!
The first few years we spent about $40 K a year on travel. DW really wanted to travel, but her late husband owned a business and could not get away.
Between 2007 and 2015, we spent at least 2 months a year traveling.
That included getting married on Santorini during DW's first European cruise.

 

[N02L84ER]

The last year both DH and I w*rked full time we paid

FED+IL+FICA+MEDI+SEP > $146,000


The past 16 years of retirement, we averaged < $60,000 per year in total expenses including taxes and insurance.

 

[rk911]

nothing comes to mind. if anything we're a bit less restrictive with our spending.

 

[cyber888]

Travel!!!

That included getting married on Santorini during DW's first European cruise.

That's nice. I have good memories staying at Oja, Santorini.

 

[jollystomper]

Nothing cut, just some reduced. The major ones:

- Federal/State taxes (now less than half as compared to my working days)
- Charitable giving (as it is in proportion to our income)
- College expenses more due to when I timed my retirement)

Clothing is down slightly, as I still like to look good in nice clothes . Overall food is down, I rarely eat out for lunch, we both cook more, and I buy much less snacks than I did in the past.

 

[TheWizard]

Not much change for me.
My commute wasn't all that long but I do more day trips on retirement that exceed my commute, so not much difference.

I do pay more income tax in retirement than when working, so clearly I worked too long, and thank you Paine-Webber...

 

[rwdflynavy]

As others have said TSP contributions (401K), Took a 38% pay cut retiring from the military, moved to a MCOL area and my mortgage is half what I used to pay in rent.

Consequently, we don't intend to touch the stache for a while as we can live well on my pension/va disability and a little very part time work.

 

[NC 57]

Expenses cut in retirement

Lower costs: Commuting, second home (sold it), contributions to retirement savings, clothing. We are much more frugal in shopping for food and household items, storing up when on sale. We take full advantage of senior discounts. Dropped financial advisor and shifted investments to low cost index funds.

Higher costs: medical care, travel (RV), home repairs and maintenance, utilities (inflation, not consumption driven), property taxes, and hobbies.

 

[FlaMariner]

We saved $$$ on the following once FIRE:

Clothes (no more suits/ties/dry cleaning)
Cars (insurance, gas, maintenance savings...went from 2 to 1 car)
Dining Out (lots of great homemade meals, a lot less eating out)
Yard Maintenance (moved to new home w/no grass to mow!)
Grocery (growing veggies and having a blast doing it, up to the challenge of shopping the sales)
Travel (it's all about off peak time travel deals, no weekend/peak time travel for us...not necessarily spending less in travel but getting more for our travel $$$ than we could when we w*rked)
Taxes (still our biggest budget expense but not what it was when a W2 slave)

I'm sure there are more....

 

[pacergal]

Off the top of my head:
Lower: gas/wear and tear on cars/commuting costs, clothing, retirement savings

Higher: gifting, travel, medical expenses since we went on Medicare (had a great cheap employee health insurance plan!)

 

[Teacher Terry]

When we first retired I went through all our expenses like Day late talked about and lowered everything I could. Then after the divorce did it again and gave up stuff I thought I had to have. I also quit giving money to charity. I still give my time.

 

[Dash man]

I still give my time.

That’s a wonderful thing to do!

 

[Teacher Terry]

Thanks Dash! I can’t afford to give money now and have always volunteered my entire life.

 

[skyking1]

Our costs will go up a bit on transportation, as DW is full time WFH and I have a company truck. I have professional licenses that I will eventually abandon, but they are not much per year.
Even though I had penciled in our costs as 'X', I know that it will be 1.2(X) right off the bat due to having time.

 

[Dash man]

Thanks Dash! I can’t afford to give money now and have always volunteered my entire life.

I can’t do as much physically anymore because of my back and some other issues, but I help where I can! We’re able to help financially and thank the Lord for that. But I like to be involved too.

 

[SecondCor521]

In fact, I've been struggling to manufacture spending. I like taking advantage of credit card bonuses (last was using Apple Pay with one of my CC and spend $100 in the next month to get a $10 credit) and have trouble finding legit spending... I'm not going to buy something I wouldn't have anyway and occasionally will buy gift cards to make up the difference when it's an option. Most of my spending goes to property taxes and insurance (home/auto/health). Health insurance actually went down slightly as the ACA with subsidy is cheaper than my contribution to my employer's plan.

When I need to manufacture spending - because sometimes I do - I am able to prepay quite a bit of my health and home/auto insurance. This helps a lot because those two bills can be on the larger side and I'm going to have to pay them eventually in the next X months anyway. Those two bills are also set up on auto pay, so they just resume being deducted whenever my prepaid credit gets used up. You can also prepay any amount, so if you happen to need $301.67 to meet a bonus, then you can just prepay that exact amount.

I also have paid property taxes via a credit card once to meet spending requirements. There is a fee, but it's not bad compared to the bonus, and worth it if there's no other option to meet spending.