HFWR
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
...the house is the last big debt expense...........
Then you will be, in classic Dave Ramsey fashion, "DEBT FREEEEEEE!!!"
2032...
...the house is the last big debt expense...........
Then you will be, in classic Dave Ramsey fashion, "DEBT FREEEEEEE!!!"
Why not post one?
....All said, though, 2010 was an expensive year, starting with a major remodel, new roof, new chimney, new girlfriend... But these expenses were budgeted for a number of years, and came from savings, and hopefully most of them won't be repeated anytime soon. Well, except the GF......
As mentioned above, all of my spending falls within my 3.5% SWR.
The set-aside for the car may have seemed confusing but it is just simple arithmetic; most of us do not include our entire net worth when computing SWR. Money for the car was set aside years before retirement, and was never considered to be part of my ER nestegg in my retirement computations.
Exactly how much do you budget for a new girlfriend ?
It'd be great to have a tripwire when you whip out your smartphone or credit card-- "Amount remaining this month on 'entertainment' category: $7.43"
I think there is a lot of creative figuring going on . I only spent this amount but it doesn't include this or that . That is fudging the facts . You total up all your expenditures and the number you get is reality . Anything else is a fantasy !
Eh, just do what businesses do for extraordinary expenses--claim the expenses as a one-time charge against earnings. Repeat annually as needed for the new girlfriend (and congratulations!).
You can't put a price on love...
This is why I look at both total spending and total spending apart from taxes.While this thread is about expenses, they can't be looked at totally in a vacuum. If an expense such as income taxes rises because the income itself rises, then it is not very relevant to the overall expenses because the money to pay those increased income taxes will always be available to pay them from the increased income.
That's quite the car. What did you buy?
After reading all these posts on how little is spent (IMHO) during the year, I feel like I should leave the forum ...
Assuming you get close to the maximum in IRA/401(K) contributions, along with such low expenditures, we must have a lot of current/future multi-millionaires posting here...
Well, at least those of us who have no pension nor bennies -- not picking on anyone here, just telling the fact -- must really save hard if we expect to survive.Assuming you get close to the maximum in IRA/401(K) contributions, along with such low expenditures, we must have a lot of current/future multi-millionaires posting here...
After reading all these posts on how little is spent (IMHO) during the year, I feel like I should leave the forum ...
That's [-]odd[/-] interesting. I feel like I don't belong after seeing the excessively high amount that most people here spend. Most of the people here spend more per year than most people I know earn.
Well, I am not one of them Khan, but I suspect they are not 5 times happier.
There's that article about the guy with the wallet that is harder to open, the lower the amount in your checking account.It'd be great to have a tripwire when you whip out your smartphone or credit card-- "Amount remaining this month on 'entertainment' category: $7.43"
I'm also a believer in "don't ask, don't tell". We had a very unusual year, money wise, spending
- $X on day to day living, including discretionary items
- $2X on gifts (among other things, both kids bought houses and we helped with the down payment)
- $2.5X in various taxes (mostly CG as I had to exercise a bunch of former mega-corp options before they expired)
Still our portfolio is bigger than it was a year ago, so all in all it was a good year financially.