Poll:What was (is) your planned monthly spend rate?

[karen1972]

We spend about 55% less.

- Moved to lower COLA
+ increased health care costs
- different circle of friends that aren't extreme high earners thus all social activities are way less expensive.
- current car costs 1/4th the previous car did.
- restaurant spend is 1/10th the previous spend as we joined a cooking meetup
* Travel is similar spend but twice as long as I actually look for deals, book in advance, realize I spend no time in the hotel so can book the $100 room vs the $400 room and still be perfectly happy.
- Deals deals deals, now that I have the time, use of coupons, happy hours, discount days, free days, etc. Before I retired I never even looked at a grocery flyer to see what was on sale, it just didn't matter, I was busy, I just bought what I needed.

I realized before I retired, my budget was 35% to savings, whatever to Tax, spend the rest, therefore, I was very price insensitive. Time was more important to me than price. Retirement reversed that.

[Nightcap]

Retired two years ago. Nervous about sequence-of-returns risk, so costs are currently higher than they will be in a few years. (A low interest rate mortgage and a zero interest rate car note give me cheap liquidity right now.) While still w*rking, after-tax spending was over 8K. Now it's under 7K. In three years, it'll be ~ 5K.

On the other hand, the ORD calculator says we can spend more, and FIREcalc shows a 100% success rate at 7K per month, so we might just settle in at 6K with some travel bucks. After all, success in retirement still has a grim end.