Late to the game and looking for advice

[target2019]

Mentioned in other threads, practically all of our income & expenses go through core checking accounts.

Each credit card is a category. For example, Lowes or HomeDepot CC is HOME EXPENSES & IMPROVEMENTS. Perhaps half of our categories are regular monthly bill-pay, with the other half being CC payments.

We summarize at year's end for chart updates.

 

[24601NoMore]

I have used Quicken to keep track of my expenses for 10 years, and found this very useful.

But wow, 15 subcategories for Lawn/Garden, 29 subcategories for Misc, and 47 subcategories for Shopping...

Well, if you don't just want one big, otherwise unexplainable number for any of those categories, not sure how else you'd do it.

For instance, here's Lawn & Garden..

- Aeration
- Animal Control (we just spent north of $1,500 to remove 5 beavers and put up a gazillion yards of fencing around trees, for example)
- Cuts & Edging (old house..we'll cut our own lawn in the new house now)
- Equipment Consumables (now..tractor gas, oil, etc. With ethanol free gas now at $5 and a thirsty tractor, I expect this to be a lot this year)
- Fall Cleanup (used to be $300+ at the old house)
- Fertilizer Service (over $1,000 for our big property)
- Other Lawn Products (weed control sprays, etc)
- Flowers (usually at least a few hundred $$)
- Landscaping
- Lawn & Garden Equipment
- Mulch ($350+ yearly)
- Outdoor decorations
- Seed (hundreds of dollars annually)
- Sprinkler Service (ditto as it includes repairs)
- Tree Service (ditto)

Sure..I could lump all that in to one category (Lawn & Garden), and get a total number - which for L&G was $3,230 last year. However, that'd be all but useless to me as I like to have insight into how much I'm spending on things year to year, and just seeing $3,230 for Lawn & Garden in 21 tells me little..

Guess it all goes to whatever works for each individual person. But this works for us and provides a lot more value than just having one big lumpy number for each top-level category.

All that said, the main point I was attempting to make is that most people spend $$ on a LOT of things they typically don't think of when they sit down to guesstimate their expenses. And unless you track - via top level categories only or break it down further, most people will miss dozens if not hundreds of things they spend money on when they're attempting to estimate what their yearly expenses truly are. I've seen that happen time and again here on ER with posts like "well, I only spend $15K a year on my house and utilities and (one or two other things)". That obviously misses the many things that most people truly spend $$ on every year and underestimates true expense spend by a ton. And if you underestimate expenses, odds are high that you're going to underestimate how much income or portfolio pulls you're gonna need to pay for ER..I was shocked, for example, to see that we need nearly $90-100K a year to fund ER ($60K before healthcare, taxes and vacation/travel) based on multiple years of expense tracking pre-ER. And we live pretty modestly, albeit in a state with high property taxes and with very high "A"CA costs.

 

[samcat]

Can I ask where you live (or a description of where you live) so that you had to have five beavers removed from your yard? I've probably only seen five beavers in my whole life and they were probably all at zoos!

Well, if you don't just want one big, otherwise unexplainable number for any of those categories, not sure how else you'd do it.

For instance, here's Lawn & Garden..

- Aeration
- Animal Control (we just spent north of $1,500 to remove 5 beavers and put up a gazillion yards of fencing around trees, for example)
- Cuts & Edging (old house..we'll cut our own lawn in the new house now)
- Equipment Consumables (now..tractor gas, oil, etc. With ethanol free gas now at $5 and a thirsty tractor, I expect this to be a lot this year)
- Fall Cleanup (used to be $300+ at the old house)
- Fertilizer Service (over $1,000 for our big property)
- Other Lawn Products (weed control sprays, etc)
- Flowers (usually at least a few hundred $$)
- Landscaping
- Lawn & Garden Equipment
- Mulch ($350+ yearly)
- Outdoor decorations
- Seed (hundreds of dollars annually)
- Sprinkler Service (ditto as it includes repairs)
- Tree Service (ditto)

Sure..I could lump all that in to one category (Lawn & Garden), and get a total number - which for L&G was $3,230 last year. However, that'd be all but useless to me as I like to have insight into how much I'm spending on things year to year, and just seeing $3,230 for Lawn & Garden in 21 tells me little..

Guess it all goes to whatever works for each individual person. But this works for us and provides a lot more value than just having one big lumpy number for each top-level category.

All that said, the main point I was attempting to make is that most people spend $$ on a LOT of things they typically don't think of when they sit down to guesstimate their expenses. And unless you track - via top level categories only or break it down further, most people will miss dozens if not hundreds of things they spend money on when they're attempting to estimate what their yearly expenses truly are. I've seen that happen time and again here on ER with posts like "well, I only spend $15K a year on my house and utilities and (one or two other things)". That obviously misses the many things that most people truly spend $$ on every year and underestimates true expense spend by a ton. And if you underestimate expenses, odds are high that you're going to underestimate how much income or portfolio pulls you're gonna need to pay for ER..I was shocked, for example, to see that we need nearly $90-100K a year to fund ER ($60K before healthcare, taxes and vacation/travel) based on multiple years of expense tracking pre-ER. And we live pretty modestly, albeit in a state with high property taxes and with very high "A"CA costs.

 

[24601NoMore]

Can I ask where you live (or a description of where you live) so that you had to have five beavers removed from your yard? I've probably only seen five beavers in my whole life and they were probably all at zoos!

Sure..we live on a small inland lake with woodlands that run along it's shoreline. Very pretty, but also prime "beaver building supply" (for their dams) territory. Basically like a "Beaver Home Depot".

We honestly never anticipated Beavers when we bought the house & property, but they chewed down ~2 dozen trees in the woods next to our house before we even noticed. Fortunately, they're more "mid-forest" than along the treeline we look at, but they basically chewed a big hole into the middle of the forest. All that's left is ~25 little stumps with pointy ends at about seated beaver height. REALLY frustrating as the trees were decent size and irreplaceable.

We had absolutely no idea how to stop them..called a bunch of people and fortunately got hooked up with an animal trapping company where all their guys are hunters. Wound up working with their "beaver expert" and the guy was really good..took us about 3 weeks to round up and, ummmm..dispose (with prejudice - let's just say there was gunpowder involved)...all the little monsters, and if we hadn't gotten them as quickly as they did, they would have done a ton more damage..

The 5 we got varied in size from a "kit" (2-3 years old) to a "Big Bertha" female we caught that was - get this - SIXTY TWO POUNDS. (Yeah, our trapper actually weighed her. I'm guessing this is the one that took out our trees).

Here's a pic of the first one (~45 lbs) we got with our awesome trapper..he was in no hurry to lift up the 62 lber for a trophy photo...

I pinged the original owners of the house, who had lived here 20+ years, and they only had beavers once. And they didn't do much damage at all, so they never even had to catch any. WE move in, and it's Beaver-O-Rama..sigh..I did read on FB that they are apparently over-populated this year in our township for some reason. Greaaaaat!

Beavers are "cute" in a way, but wow can they do some serious damage. One beaver can reportedly take down a couple dozen trees in one night. So if you ever see signs of Beaver damage on your property (like chew marks on trees about a foot or two up), go after them ASAP..

 

[samcat]

I had no idea they could be so destructive...that is really incredible.

Sure..we live on a small inland lake with woodlands that run along it's shoreline. Very pretty, but also prime "beaver building supply" (for their dams) territory. Basically like a "Beaver Home Depot".

We honestly never anticipated Beavers when we bought the house & property, but they chewed down ~2 dozen trees in the woods next to our house before we even noticed. Fortunately, they're more "mid-forest" than along the treeline we look at, but they basically chewed a big hole into the middle of the forest. All that's left is ~25 little stumps with pointy ends at about seated beaver height. REALLY frustrating as the trees were decent size and irreplaceable.

We had absolutely no idea how to stop them..called a bunch of people and fortunately got hooked up with an animal trapping company where all their guys are hunters. Wound up working with their "beaver expert" and the guy was really good..took us about 3 weeks to round up and, ummmm..dispose (with prejudice - let's just say there was gunpowder involved)...all the little monsters, and if we hadn't gotten them as quickly as they did, they would have done a ton more damage..

The 5 we got varied in size from a "kit" (2-3 years old) to a "Big Bertha" female we caught that was - get this - SIXTY TWO POUNDS. (Yeah, our trapper actually weighed her. I'm guessing this is the one that took out our trees).

Here's a pic of the first one (~45 lbs) we got with our awesome trapper..he was in no hurry to lift up the 62 lber for a trophy photo...

I pinged the original owners of the house, who had lived here 20+ years, and they only had beavers once. And they didn't do much damage at all, so they never even had to catch any. WE move in, and it's Beaver-O-Rama..sigh..I did read on FB that they are apparently over-populated this year in our township for some reason. Greaaaaat!

Beavers are "cute" in a way, but wow can they do some serious damage. One beaver can reportedly take down a couple dozen trees in one night. So if you ever see signs of Beaver damage on your property (like chew marks on trees about a foot or two up), go after them ASAP..

 

[rodi]

Welcome to the forum.

As for tracking of spending... I found it helpful to track to figure out *where* money was getting spent. But there's an easy way to see how *much* you currently spend. It's probably a LOT more than you think.

Take your gross pay. Subtract out Income tax, state tax, SS tax, medicare tax, any other local taxes.

Now subtract out your known investments/and expenses:
- Mortgage, retirement contributions through work, IRA/backdoor roth contributions, any brokerage account auto investing, any 529 contributions.

Everything else is getting spent.

- subtract out insurance premiums (health, car, home, disability, ltc, umbrella, malpractice (you're a doctor, I assume you have this.)...

- subtract out any other regular payments you can think of. (Cable, phone, car loan or lease payments, internet, utilities, streaming services.

What you have left is stuff like groceries, dining out, target runs, clothing... and that's where you'll need to track spending.

I kept refining my tracking of spending from top down (salary, minus known investments/expenses) and from bottom up (tracking day to day spending) till the numbers reconciled.

My first top down estimate of spending was a lot more than I thought... so I tackled recurring bills first - changed cell provider, renegotiated cable, cut more than 1 streaming service. I also started paying attention to amazon shopping, target shopping, starbucks runs, etc.

 

[Koolau]

Can I ask where you live (or a description of where you live) so that you had to have five beavers removed from your yard? I've probably only seen five beavers in my whole life and they were probably all at zoos!

A lot of the midwest has beaver problems wherever there is a reliable source of fresh flowing water - especially when "civilization" is a few hundred yards away. The frustrating thing is that they don't use most of the trees they chew down. IIRC they continue to chew off trees even when their dams are completed. I believe this is an instinct intended to keep their rapidly growing teeth at reasonable length. Beavers are very destructive (but cute) critters. YMMV

 

[Sunset]

Welcome OP.

I use spending tracker on my phone (it's free) to easily track my expenses , I move the totals to a spreadsheet each month and have 6 years of history to view now.

Don't fret too much about the I-bonds, they are a great investment right now, but you don't have to rush. If you buy them in the next 5 months at anytime, you will get the 9.62% for 6 months after you buy them.
Then the interest will reset (my guess is ~6%) for another 6 months.
So you are not missing anything by not buying them today.