daylatedollarshort
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2013
- Messages
- 9,358
One of the activities that help me decide what to focus on is to make a spreadsheet of all the ways I can optimize expenses or make a little extra money without getting an actual job (like credit card hacks and bank bonuses), how long does each one take and what is my ROI over 30+ years. For example, I don't make my own tortillas because I can buy organic tortillas at Costco pretty cheap, and making tortillas would require weekly work. Replacing a shower head with a low flow one is a one time activity that might take an hour or two of research and then the benefits last for years and years into the future without any additional effort on my part.
I'm not so sure about cutting travel and the big items as the most bang for the buck. Small ongoing expense cuts really add up combined together and multiplied by the decades, unless you are already living with very low overhead and there is nothing left to optimize. If you can cut your fixed expenses painlessly by $40K a year, that is $40K a year you can use for travel. Or not, if you look for last minute deals on travel and use credit card hacks for travel points, you might be able to cut that travel $40K as well.
If you work extra and make $40K that adds $40K less taxes to your retirement funding for one year. If you cut $40K annually from your expenses over 30 years that is $1.2M less you need in retirement funding.
I'm not so sure about cutting travel and the big items as the most bang for the buck. Small ongoing expense cuts really add up combined together and multiplied by the decades, unless you are already living with very low overhead and there is nothing left to optimize. If you can cut your fixed expenses painlessly by $40K a year, that is $40K a year you can use for travel. Or not, if you look for last minute deals on travel and use credit card hacks for travel points, you might be able to cut that travel $40K as well.
If you work extra and make $40K that adds $40K less taxes to your retirement funding for one year. If you cut $40K annually from your expenses over 30 years that is $1.2M less you need in retirement funding.
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