We tried to live within a budget, but we can't

[cyber888]

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Originally Posted by corn18 We can afford it, so I'm not sweating it. I still like tracking everything. Always have. My spreadsheet goes back to 1996. It's always interesting going back and looking at what we spent money on back then. I don't make a big deal out of it with her and we never fight over money.

Don't sweat the overspending then. Tell you what - revise your budget to what you're spending now. Because that's the budget you are enjoying. Increase your budget .. you can afford a higher budget.

[Koolau]

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Originally Posted by RobbieB Yeah, pretty easy. If you blow the budget but can afford it then you need a bigger budget. Or better yet, no budget -

Ding, ding, ding, ding. We have a winner! NO BUDGET. Works for us.

We've never used budgeting and have never had any serious money issues (no - we didn't make tons of money.) We are just naturally frugal. My idea of budgeting is to watch the NW once a year. If it goes up, we must be on budget

I actually ENCOURAGE DW to buy more clothes. Her closet is bulging and she's taken over half my space BUT she buys clothes at thrift shops and "good" stores on clearance. I encourage her, because, God love her, she gets a real charge out of finding just the "right" blouse or sweater or Capris. Her thrill and fulfillment is worth whatever it costs - and it doesn't cost much. I swear she gets the same pleasure from hand-coordinating a new "outfit" as I do buying a new (to me) car. It's just her thing and she deserves that pleasure. She is, after all my DW!

I on the other hand, need a belt. I've needed one for a year (last one disintegrated in the Hawaiian salt air.) I never think to look for one when we are out shopping. DW will eventually find one and buy it for me for Christmas or BD. In the mean time, I just pull my 1 of 3 pair of black shorts (same make and model) up over my belly and all is covered by my one of 6 Aloha shirts (I have TWO of my favorite Aloha shirt - they cost $1 each at Central Union Church thrift shop at S. Beratania St. at Punahou. They used to be the "service shirt" for one of the major hotels so I think they still have a Cintas label.)

So I donate my half of the clothing budget to DW.

[daylatedollarshort]

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Originally Posted by tb001 I enjoy hearing about others spending habits. And find it interesting that I aspire to both a $5k/mo food budget and a $400/mo one! We shaved off about 10% of our food budget when we stopped working full time by cutting the easy dinners out when we didn’t feel like cooking. I’ve shaved off another 10% by buying in bulk and shopping discounts. But even with a lot of effort, we’re still well over $400/mo. Closer to $2k for a family of four. When I see the uber low budgets I’m not sure if it’s because we’re in a higher col area, eat completely different things, have a larger family, or I’m just a bad shopper! We could easily spend far more just by shopping at the regular vons or Albertsons near us.

For a $400ish food budget for two -

3 pounds of produce @ avg $1 a pound (50% organic) = $3
1 wild caught salmon pack = $1.27
2 ounces nuts and seeds = .50
Grains and beans (cooked from dried) = .50

= $5.27 a day per person for food. I have run this through a nutrition program and it should get us 100% of the daily value of nutrients and all our calories. Plus I add in extra in the budget for items like organic frozen berries for smoothies, coffee, spices, tea, raisins, etc.

That is my baseline budget, which I base on Blue Zone kind of foods. On paper we should be able to spend $450 easily a month for healthy food, but then when we get to the store we always end up spending more $100 or $200 more in a month.

We live in HCOL area, but there are good prices at the discount stores, ethnic markets, produce market, and a farm to table delivery service (organic produce at half off supermarket prices). A lot of the staples I order online. The Guardian had an article recently on food prices and said that farmers see 15 cents on the dollar. The rest goes to processing and marketing, which is controlled by a handful of major corporations. If you can find ways to buy directly from farmers and limit how much processed food you buy, you can save on that 85 cents that goes to marketing and processing.

[Exchme]

I do wonder whether OP is building in a tax problem later. He listed $110K expenses with only $10K of it in income taxes. That level of spending implies a certain amount of assets, so if a lot of his money is tax deferred, he could be hit with bigger tax bills in the future. Just make sure there is a plan and not a surprise.

[tb001]

Ah, that’s interesting. I think our biggest downfall spending wise is that we’re pretty inflexible with what we eat. We eat a lot of fish (salmon and tuna at least once a week). And tons of fresh fruit/berries. I just feel like I invest a LOT of energy trying to spend less and we’re still way above what other people spend!

I try to balance the more expensive dinners with pork or chicken thighs, and buy fruit that’s in season, but it still adds up. As do DH’s lunches out, but I’m putting those in the same category as the OP’s wife’s clothing habit. We’ll call it his hobby!

[corn18]

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Originally Posted by Exchme I do wonder whether OP is building in a tax problem later. He listed $110K expenses with only $10K of it in income taxes. That level of spending implies a certain amount of assets, so if a lot of his money is tax deferred, he could be hit with bigger tax bills in the future. Just make sure there is a plan and not a surprise.

My current plan has us converting most of my 401k in the 12% (then 15%) tax bracket starting next year @ age 56. Going to keep about $100k @ age 72 in case we have giant medical bills later on.

I can also tax loss harvest all of my long term capital gains in my taxable account @ 0% at the same time. That's why my initial Roth conversions are small.

This is what our tax plan looks like (nominal 2021 $$$$):

[tb001]

Did you work with someone to come up with that plan, or put it together yourself? I need to do something like that.

[brett]

We stop worrying or looking at the numbers a long time ago when we realized that it did not matter any more. Our expenses would never exceed our incomes.

We had enough. And we are incredibly thankful for it. End of.

As long as your budget is below your income it is only a number.

[corn18]

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Originally Posted by tb001 Did you work with someone to come up with that plan, or put it together yourself? I need to do something like that.

I did it myself. I love spreadsheets and data. I have a 1040 and the SS worksheet built into my tax spreadsheet. I can run scenarios for different conversion rates, tax gain harvesting, death of a spouse, reduced SS, when I take SS and a few others. What I found though is that it really didn't matter much, even at the corner cases. The only scenario that really hurt, tax wise, was if we did no conversions and I died around RMD time. Even that wasn't terrible.

[beernutzbob]

My wife as a general rule is on my case to update my wardrobe. I visited my brother in Stamford CT recently and went into NYC 3 days I was there.

I was wearing jeans one day and it was so hot in the city I was drenched from walking around. I couldn't take it anymore so I stopped in a TJ Maxx on Park Avenue and bought a huge amount of clothes for under $80 with tax.

DW was very excited to hear I went clothes shopping in NYC but enthusiasm waned when she heard where I shopped. Still, she liked everything I picked out.

I changed into some of my new clothes in the bathroom of a Chinatown restaurant while they were making my lunch.

I can't imagine spending $600 in a month on clothes much less average that. My last work suit from Jos A Bank was only around $400 and that was bought a long time ago.

[RunningBum]

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Originally Posted by tb001 I think our biggest downfall spending wise is that we’re pretty inflexible with what we eat. We eat a lot of fish (salmon and tuna at least once a week). And tons of fresh fruit/berries. I just feel like I invest a LOT of energy trying to spend less and we’re still way above what other people spend!

I'd look at cutting just about anything else before I cut back on healthy eating like this seems to be.

[tb001]

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Originally Posted by RunningBum I'd look at cutting just about anything else before I cut back on healthy eating like this seems to be.

Ha! Yes, we are very focused on healthy eating. But I see super low budgets and feel like we should be able to do better! Our berries aren’t even organic!

[daylatedollarshort]

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Originally Posted by tb001 Ha! Yes, we are very focused on healthy eating. But I see super low budgets and feel like we should be able to do better! Our berries aren’t even organic!

Berries are a lot cheaper if you don't mind frozen, plus there is no spoilage with frozen. We buy organic, frozen blueberries, cherries, strawberries and mangoes at an outlet store for $2.50 a pound and make smoothies every day. EWG has strawberries and cherries on their dirty dozen list of produce worth buying organic.

Per your chicken thigh comment, the doctor behind the eat to starve cancer Tedtalk, says chicken thighs are good for you because they are high in vitamin K2. He has a shopping list here - https://drwilliamli.com/wp-content/u...obile_Icon.pdf

We weren't very careful with expenses when we working and raising kids, and had a lot of waste and overpaying for goods and services in our budget. We've been able to chop $40K off our annual budget since we retired now that we have more time to price shop groceries and optimize all other expenses for the same quality of life. That is like enough extra after tax cash to buy a low end Tesla every year, so it is worth it to me to do the optimizations.

[Gumby]

The young wife and I spend what many would consider an insane amount of money on food and wine, both at home and in restaurants. On the other hand, we don't spend on fancy clothes, professional sporting event attendance or most "toys". That's just the way we like to live. Others have different priorities, and that's fine too. As I have said many times - it's your money, do what you want with it (which encompasses both how you invest it and how you spend it). I'll do what I want with mine, and we can both be happy.

Oddly enough, even though I always have tracked and probably always will continue to track our spending to the penny -- I can tell you precisely what we spent every month on about 57 different categories over the past 20 years or so -- we do not have a budget. While I have become very adept at predicting how much we will spend on each category, we actually spend what we want, when we want and how we want.

And, based on my knowledge of what we actually spend, rather than what we we "budget" or feel we should spend, I am confident we will never run out of money.

[RobbieB]

I wouldn't. Gimme $400 worth of caviar and I'll down it in 2 days. With frozen vodka of course -

[jollystomper]

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Originally Posted by daylatedollarshort Berries are a lot cheaper if you don't mind frozen, plus there is no spoilage with frozen. We buy organic, frozen blueberries, cherries, strawberries and mangoes at an outlet store for $2.50 a pound and make smoothies every day. EWG has strawberries and cherries on their dirty dozen list of produce worth buying organic.

+1 my go-to healthy snacks are frozen pineapple/blueberries/strawberries, usually from Costco. I use them in protein smoothies as well as "ice cubes" in my zero sugar drinks.

[Sunset]

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Originally Posted by RetiredHappy ^^^^ It is social media. It is varying net worth and expenses at play here. Our food/groceries/dining run at about $60K a year. This does not include travel and other entertainment expenses. As long as each spends within what their net worth supports, there is no reason for anyone else to judge how the other person should spend their money.

You Win

Ours is 1/10th that number.
If I was wild I could double possibly triple ours to $18K , but it would be hard.

Feel free to provide instructions in the BTD thread, I might learn something

[RetiredHappy]

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Originally Posted by Sunset You Win Ours is 1/10th that number. If I was wild I could double possibly triple ours to $18K , but it would be hard. Feel free to provide instructions in the BTD thread, I might learn something

I already feel like I am bragging here. I will venture over there to take a look. The impression that I have with BTD is one-off as opposed to sustaining lifestyle.

[tb001]

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Originally Posted by RetiredHappy I already feel like I am bragging here. I will venture over there to take a look. The impression that I have with BTD is one-off as opposed to sustaining lifestyle.

I just want to eat what you’re eating! Do you do a lot of dining out? I can pretty easily see hitting those kinds of numbers with frequent good meals out, especially if that includes alcohol.

[NW-Bound]

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Originally Posted by RetiredHappy We spend about $60K a year on food, groceries and household stuff. Golf runs about $20K a year. Travel is another $25K a year...

$60K on food is hard for me to do. That's $1200/week. I can see that a couple may spend that money going out to nice restaurants several times a week, but I would get tired of it quickly, and would crave some simple food cooked at home.

I have no interest in golf, but the $25K of travel is quite easy to do, and pleasing too. I would not be able to spend even more on travel, because I would then miss home, and travel would also become a chore if it was overdone.

Different people have truly different interests and fancies. That's why one must pursue his/her happiness in his/her own way, and cannot mimic or envy someone else.

PS. My aunt and her husband have taken quite a few world cruises. She told me that once she got tired of food on the ship, and managed to acquire some Cup-o-Noodle. Yes, instant ramen! She needed something else, other than what they were serving.

I have not taken any cruise longer than 1 week, and craving of instant ramen has not happened to me yet.