Has your retirement spending matched your estimates??

[Redwwoo]

Not exactly

Before retiring I tabulated the prior 30 months of spending and discovered that we were spending consistently. For our retirement plan I projected forward the same level of consistent spending but tacked on a healthy chunk for travel. After 18 months of retirement I recently reassessed. We spent more than we had when I was working, but less than I projected for the extra travel (three trips to Europe for a total of about 10 weeks).
The short version is that I spent significantly more than I would have had I been working, but I planned to spend more and ended up spending significantly less than I had planned.
I've found myself battling a tendency to try to cut my expenses by foregoing this or that. According to my plan I do not and have not needed to do that.
Before I retired my wife worried that I could become cheap and miserly.
Since I am measuring my spending, I know how I've let my lifelong tendencies to save rather than spend remain in control this past year.
In order to correct myself I just today bought some airplane tickets to go visit Charleston, SC for the weekend, but it is a battle to constantly have to remind myself that it is okay to spend according to a plan.

 

[YVRRocketSurgery]

Is there anyone in their late 70's+ that is willing to provide a view to their spending profile in retirement to support or challenge the concept that your spend plateaus and then gradually declines as you become less active? Or are spends being substituted for say increased health costs?

 

[imoldernu]

Is there anyone in their late 70's+ that is willing to provide a view to their spending profile in retirement to support or challenge the concept that your spend plateaus and then gradually declines as you become less active? Or are spends being substituted for say increased health costs?

In my 82nd year of life, and 29th year of retirement.
A dear wife and four great kids, and cancer at age 53. Took a big chance with the thought that if I lived, I could go back. Frugal. Adjust along the way. Did everything we wanted. Age 75, slowed down and costs dropped accordingly.
Very happy, feel safe, dollarwise.

For anyone interested, a retirement story... the good and the bad. Long and wordy, but covering most of the bases.

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/sharing-23-years-of-frugal-retirement-62251.html

 

[Helen]

I over estimated what I thought we would spend even with our overseas travel. Last year was our highest spending year and we were 30% under budget. We aren't going to strive to spend the money, but this year we are spending an additional six weeks overseas.

We have been fortunate to have good health during our high deductible years. We are now safely under the umbrella of our subsidized government healthcare plan. I hope our good health holds out and I hope that for all of us.

 

[YVRRocketSurgery]

In my 82nd year of life, and 29th year of retirement.
A dear wife and four great kids, and cancer at age 53. Took a big chance with the thought that if I lived, I could go back. Frugal. Adjust along the way. Did everything we wanted. Age 75, slowed down and costs dropped accordingly.
Very happy, feel safe, dollarwise.

For anyone interested, a retirement story... the good and the bad. Long and wordy, but covering most of the bases.

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/sharing-23-years-of-frugal-retirement-62251.html

Thank you for providing the link to your thread as I hadn't come across it. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and look forward to updates and additional thoughts!

 

[Milton]

I'm going through budgeting exercises before I retire and see many opportunities for reducing our living expenses and this makes me very optimistic about being FI. At the same time, these budgets are just estimates and I worry that reality will be another story.

Do you keep careful track of your current (pre-retirement) spending? If you assume that this will remain the same - in reality, work-related expenses will disappear - it will go some way towards anticipating new post-retirement expenses, e.g. travel and hobbies. Then factor in an additional 10-25%, depending on how conservative you want to be, and you should have a decent baseline.

Make sure that you have budgeted correctly for medical expenses after retirement. In the USA, that's the elephant/gorilla in the room.

Fixed.

 

[Taxman59]

2 1/2 years into retirement, and spent nearly $40k over budget. An offset of that is a $40k payoff of the mortgage, 8k on a truck. increase in vacation budget of 10k not to mention the oop of 5 surgeries ""(me 3, DW 1 and DS3 1). Going forward, spending looks like it will be at projected or less (depends on vacations!).

 

[Shanky]

About two years now. Just a few thousand under budget. We do budget $2000 a month for "Misc", and we have managed to spend it on items we did not plan for.