Knee-jerk and expense-tracking

[Al18]

If you’re retired and have more than enough, then why are you recording all your expenses? Discuss it with your significant other and consider saving 50 hours per year and stop recording all expenses. I only record and track assets, so I have an idea of what we can spend each year. After 4.5 years of retirement, I still have more than I started with so we’re good.

You can’t take it with you.

[marko]

We spend what we want, when we want. Our lifestyle is pretty much the governor, but we do live quite high.

Of course, that private jet is out of reach-- and always has been--but the day may come for one of those pay-as-you-go deals.

What is interesting is that we spend pretty much the same amount every year...within $5k but just on different things. Again, our guardrails are our lifestyle rather then a set, excel sheet calculation.

[Koolau]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 I do too. Because we set this stuff up in Quicken decades ago, and I still download all transactions and reconcile all statements against receipts to verify accuracy. But I only occasionally look at the spending reports. Yet it’s all there, tracked, whether I look or not, ha ha.

Yeah, I tried it one year and I did find a few surprises - yet, the bottom line was virtually exactly what I expected. It's just that a few of the categories were higher or lower than I expected. YMMV

[Kings over Queens]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al18 If you’re retired and have more than enough, then why are you recording all your expenses? Discuss it with your significant other and consider saving 50 hours per year and stop recording all expenses. I only record and track assets, so I have an idea of what we can spend each year. After 4.5 years of retirement, I still have more than I started with so we’re good. You can’t take it with you.

Not retired yet, but I can tell you I will likely continue to track expenses, just because that's how I'm wired. Old habits die hard.

I don't claim to be rational.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by palomalou Does anyone else have a knee-jerk "think again, you can't afford it" reaction to the thought of spending any money?

I can relate to this! I blame it on my Scottish ancestry. That, plus all the tales of hardship so many of our parents' generation experienced during the Great Depression.

It helps if I try to wait a few months between larger expenditures. My theory is that I can afford anything if I wait long enough before buying it.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by W2R I can relate to this! I blame it on my Scottish ancestry. It helps if I try to wait a few months between larger expenditures. My theory is that I can afford anything if I wait long enough before buying it.

Actually we kind of do that too. We’ll identify a strong want, but mull over it for a while. No agonizing either. Just like to think about it for a while before committing.

DH usually knows what he really wants months in advance, ha ha.

[Gumby]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al18 If you’re retired and have more than enough, then why are you recording all your expenses? Discuss it with your significant other and consider saving 50 hours per year and stop recording all expenses. I only record and track assets, so I have an idea of what we can spend each year. After 4.5 years of retirement, I still have more than I started with so we’re good. You can’t take it with you.

I still track all our expenses; it doesn't take 50 hours per year. But even if it did, it pleases me to do so and I've got plenty of time. And, yes, we also have more than when we retired 4 years ago. I'm well aware I can't take it with me, but I also feel no particular need to spend it all before I go. We already do what we want when we want, spend what we want when we want and enjoy our lives.

[Koolau]

Quote:

Originally Posted by W2R I can relate to this! I blame it on my Scottish ancestry. That, plus all the tales of hardship so many of our parents' generation experienced during the Great Depression. It helps if I try to wait a few months between larger expenditures. My theory is that I can afford anything if I wait long enough before buying it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 Actually we kind of do that too. We’ll identify a strong want, but mull over it for a while. No agonizing either. Just like to think about it for a while before committing. DH usually knows what he really wants months in advance, ha ha.

I remember living with "just enough" as my parents struggled to feed everyone (but they did.) So now, I'm very much in tune with this approach.

Get an idea for some thing I/we/she wants. Think about it for a while. Maybe do some research. Look for ways to lower the cost. Think a little more. Then buy it or forget it. Every time we've bought on impulse, we have regretted it. We've pretty much learned our lesson, I think.

We'd rather miss an "opportunity to buy" than regret a purchase later. W*rks for us.

[LateToFIRE]

I'm cruising towards an overdue retirement within the next 12 months, so income is still quite strong. We live a very nice lifestyle and other than consolidating into our resort home, don't expect lifestyle to change very much in retirement, other than more free time, more travel, more seeing people we care about.

DW is very intentional about how she spends $$$ coming from a very frugal "Millionaire Next Door" type of family where shaving nickels was the culture. I am a bit the opposite, coming from a fam where financial hardship was our norm - frugality was a forced requirement but money was not always spent carefully or wisely.

Over our long marriage we've merged styles, where she's now somewhat less uptight about spending and I try to be more aware of what I'm spending. We are in-sync now and both recognize that we have accumulated too much STUFF and will be needing to thin it all out soon, which is incentive to not buy more random STUFF.

We don't budget, but on a big picture basis, I do have a keen sense of the amount of $$$'s coming and going for retirement planning. I'm fairly certain our assets can cover our lifestyle for a very long time, but also know that once there is no earned income hitting the bank account every couple weeks, will probably be a unsettling for awhile and we'll probably cut way back until we see how it goes. That is just how we're both wired - we'll get past it once the dust settles.

Now, to the question at hand, I rarely think "oh I can't afford that". Can't afford is not in my vocabulary - and I've worked really hard all my life to make that pretty close to reality probably because of my childhood where so many things seemed out of reach. I like to say "we can afford just about ANYTHING, just maybe not EVERYTHING all at once".

And having been there, done that on a lot of high life type stuff in my working years, I've gotten a lot of the need to acquire out of my system, and feel pretty grounded about what's truly valuable to me. I can now admire the luxuries other people are wearing, driving, sporting, etc. without being envious, because: (1) I know what it costs, (2) I know I could have it if I truly wanted it, and (3) I know I'm not necessarily willing to pay the cost (and I don't just mean $$$).

[COcheesehead]

I still track expenses, but in broad categories - 7 of them - and update them when I pay the credit card. Not because I am trying to stay within a budget, I just like to see where we are at. It takes 5 minutes a month.

[Koolau]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LateToFIRE I'm cruising towards an overdue retirement within the next 12 months, so income is still quite strong. We live a very nice lifestyle and other than consolidating into our resort home, don't expect lifestyle to change very much in retirement, other than more free time, more travel, more seeing people we care about. DW is very intentional about how she spends $$$ coming from a very frugal "Millionaire Next Door" type of family where shaving nickels was the culture. I am a bit the opposite, coming from a fam where financial hardship was our norm - frugality was a forced requirement but money was not always spent carefully or wisely. Over our long marriage we've merged styles, where she's now somewhat less uptight about spending and I try to be more aware of what I'm spending. We are in-sync now and both recognize that we have accumulated too much STUFF and will be needing to thin it all out soon, which is incentive to not buy more random STUFF. We don't budget, but on a big picture basis, I do have a keen sense of the amount of $$$'s coming and going for retirement planning. I'm fairly certain our assets can cover our lifestyle for a very long time, but also know that once there is no earned income hitting the bank account every couple weeks, will probably be a unsettling for awhile and we'll probably cut way back until we see how it goes. That is just how we're both wired - we'll get past it once the dust settles. Now, to the question at hand, I rarely think "oh I can't afford that". Can't afford is not in my vocabulary - and I've worked really hard all my life to make that pretty close to reality probably because of my childhood where so many things seemed out of reach. I like to say "we can afford just about ANYTHING, just maybe not EVERYTHING all at once". And having been there, done that on a lot of high life type stuff in my working years, I've gotten a lot of the need to acquire out of my system, and feel pretty grounded about what's truly valuable to me. I can now admire the luxuries other people are wearing, driving, sporting, etc. without being envious, because: (1) I know what it costs, (2) I know I could have it if I truly wanted it, and (3) I know I'm not necessarily willing to pay the cost (and I don't just mean $$$).

It's funny how each of us has adapted from our various financial backgrounds. My family was probably considered poor, but I never felt deprived. I was acutely aware of our precarious financial situation and I'm sure that's why I was willing to w*rk in the family business from the time I was able (probably 7) I finally started getting paid $0.25/hour at age 9. That felt like a lot of money. Anyway, when we became solidly middle class, I never felt like I had to have the latest or best. I was glad to get hand me downs and used clothing.

Now, I'm solidly upper middle class (financially) and able to buy (as you profoundly point out) ANYTHING but not EVERYTHING.

But I still feel tugs from my childhood NOT to purchase things because they just seem too big a luxury for me. (Heh, heh, like my Vette dream. I could buy one, but, NAAAHHH. Too much money for the joy it would bring. Just a nice dream, I guess. YMMV

[brett]

We only track one number. Total monthly after tax spend. More for information purposes than anything else. No interest in keeping track of how much coffee, eggs, or fresh fruit/veg that we buy. Or how much we spend on utilities. We do, however, look closely at expenses such as cable, insurances, communication costs that can often be tendered or negotiated down in price.

We do not think twice about buying something that we want or need BUT we do shop on value, not price. The latter is sometimes a very poor indicator of value or of quality.

[marko]

Our "tracking" method consists of simply looking at our income from SS + portfolio withdrawals minus whats left over at Year-End.

So we know broadly what we are spending but outside of core expenses can't really say on what.

For us it doesn't matter as it's almost always about the same.

[athena53]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LateToFIRE <snip> Now, to the question at hand, I rarely think "oh I can't afford that". Can't afford is not in my vocabulary - and I've worked really hard all my life to make that pretty close to reality ...<snip> I can now admire the luxuries other people are wearing, driving, sporting, etc. without being envious, because: (1) I know what it costs, (2) I know I could have it if I truly wanted it, and (3) I know I'm not necessarily willing to pay the cost (and I don't just mean $$$).

Both of those points really resonate with me. I grew up comfortably middle class but for some reason I was always afraid of being poor in old age. I'm not.

And it's a wonderful feeling too look at pretty things and think, "Yeah, if I made it a priority I could afford that $15,000 rose gold band for my Apple watch...but I wouldn't get $15,000 worth of pleasure out of it, so I won't buy it". That's how I look at my splurges, which are mostly travel. I can afford just about anything but I want to spend money in ways that matter most to me.

[38Chevy454]

Quote:

Originally Posted by brett We do not think twice about buying something that we want or need BUT we do shop on value, not price. The latter is sometimes a very poor indicator of value or of quality.

Old saying about price vs quality: The bitterness of poor quality lingers longer than the sweetness of low price.

[skyking1]

@athena53 well said.
The luxuries that I used to value are no longer as important. We change and adapt.

[freedomatlast]

For me, tracking every expenditure as it occurs takes some of the fun and freedom out of having enough to do whatever we want. So we don't track expenditures by categories day by day, week by week or month by month. I do, at the end of the year, add what the total credit card expenditures are plus the total of the checks and cash withdrawals are for the year and see how it compares to past years. Then I check this against the balance of the total of the remaining investible assets and we're good to go for another year. So far we're way under what firecalc says we can do.

[skyking1]

I track our average in and out by comparing date for date at the bank website.
We get paid so much, and have so much surplus on average each month. I won't look any closer than that for those "freedom and fun" reasons above this post.
I will have to knuckle down and record the new house build expenditures for tax purposes.
I did not do that at the beach property and now I have no record of some of our cost basis.
OOPS!
I have the bigger ticket items and costs but will be on the hook for a little more capital gain than necessary. It's a lesson learned.
I will kick that can down the road with a 1031 exchange, hopefully.

[Sunset]

I track every penny I spend, I use a free phone app (Spending Tracker), so it's actually easy. I like to know (not guesstimate) how much I spent on various categories.
I spend 5 minutes a month transferring the monthly category totals to a spreadsheet, so I have a record going back years, just for fun.

I buy what I want and think I'll get use/enjoyment out of, but don't want to be a fool and get ripped off either.

[Ronstar]

I tracked expenses by category for more than 20 years. Established a baseline. Now I only track total spending per month.

The spending numbers are fairly consistent. I have all the expensive toys I want and we don't want to travel more than we have been.

The only major expense looming is a new house. And if so, DW wants all new furniture. That could get expensive.