What are your numbers?

[skywalker]

Single dude living in Seattle. Annual baseline budget looks like this, does not include occasional big ticket items.

• Home (taxes and maintenance) = $9700
• Utilities (heat, internet, phone water) = $5200
• Auto (gas, insurance, maintenance) = $3150
• Health (Doctor, pharma, etc) = $2000 (on an high deductible plan through work)
• Food & Dining = $6500
• Shopping = $4000
• Entertainment & Travel = $7400
• Fed Taxes = Varies

I've been tracking expenses for three years now and this budget represents the average.

[Tomtom]

We are just retiring but in our "test" year the household budget was 68K.
Travel should increase next year but we also paid off our mortgages which is an offset. So we're estimating 6k a month..

[Sunset]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FiveDriver Determining a Budget is one of the most important steps in Retirement. We've tracked expenses for several years, and have a real good feel for our number.....

We didn't do that but because of this site I figured I should and can now report that I'm on track for spending $2,100 per month.
Unfortunately DW is not as keen as I am about tracking so I don't really know what she spends, but it's probably around $2K /month.

This is a number we need to raise, with more vacations..

[RobLJ]

6-7k/month and that's not skimping.
Retirement numbers are 10k/month, just for the hell of it. (DW still works and I work almost 1/2 time online, so we're still adding to the retirement nut.)

[pihwoah]

$1800-$2000 for two people living in the southwest.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset We didn't do that but because of this site I figured I should and can now report that I'm on track for spending $2,100 per month. Unfortunately DW is not as keen as I am about tracking so I don't really know what she spends, but it's probably around $2K /month. This is a number we need to raise, with more vacations..

Raising is easy. Reducing is hard.
Buying is easy. Selling is hard.
Goofing off is easy. Working is hard.
Buy high/sell low is easy. Buy low/sell high is hard.

There's always that asymmetry in life. Basically, whatever one does to make his stash smaller is easy. The reverse is hard.

[Winemaker]

$36,000 covers all fixed costs including $18,000 for a mortgage. 7 years left on mortgage, but it also has one of the rentals wrapped into it. Additional $18,600 for health care insurance.

[tdv2]

Currently spending ~$6,600/mo....still working..... been tracking our expenses for over 3 years. Pulling the plug next year....will be 53. I'm budgeting an additional $2k/mo for health insurance when retired, this will be the biggest line item on the budget....that will put us at about $8,600/mo.
Fido RIP is giving me the green light to spend up to about $15k/mo with current assets, DW's pension and SS at some point. I hair cut the SS numbers by 25% figuring that something has to give there. A few years down the road will likely move out of NJ...potential to save significantly on property tax.

So having said all this, if we spend $10k/mo we will be able to do some more travel and cover all expenses. With DW's pension starting at retirement this puts us at a 2.5% WR.