What Definition of Monthly Budget is the Standard Here?

Most of our spending is put on credit cards, except for some direct bill pays from the checking account, such as utility bills. Our spending ends up being very lumpy, so it is hard to say what is a budget. Under "normal" circumstances, it's probably $7-8000/month. but given replacing two cars in two years, one paid for in cash, and a kitchen remodel scheduled for 2025, and variations in travel, monthly budgeting becomes not worth the time and effort. We play for LTC insurance annually, and auto insurance semi-annually. I think with all the added expenses as mentioned, we probably spend an average of $10K/month.
 
I just used fixed & variable expenses.

Fixed is mostly shelter & its associated expenses...insurance, property tax, basic utilities, e.g. gas/electric.
 
I'm getting to the point of needing to actively plan my retirement. There are a lot of helpful threads here with topics like, "Review my Plan" or "Can I Retire with This Much Money?" etc. Inside of these threads oftentimes the poster will say something like this, "I've budgeted $11K per month", or "I've got $8.5K budgeted per month."

Really?

...
I divide our annual budget up into three parts:
  • Monthly expenses (health insurance premiums, utility bills, groceries, restaurants, recurring donations, parking (we live in a city), gas for the cars, gifts, etc. etc.)
  • Lumpy expenses (home, auto, umbrella insurance bills; prescription drugs and dental work; home improvements and purchases such as furniture, appliances, electronics; taxes; auto repairs; a fixed vacation budget to see family)
  • Discretionary spending - we each get an annual discretionary budget which we spend as we want (clothing, hobbies, gifts for our individual families, travel, haircuts, restaurants, gym memberships, etc.)
The Monthly expenses are required and have little wiggle room; we LBYM and this is surprisingly low (~$2450/month, no mortgage - health insurance premiums are 23% of that). There is some room in the Lumpy expenses to reduce spending if needed (averages out to $2900/month); the Discretionary spending is where we would cut back if we needed to ($1,000/month each, although this varies a fair amount from year to year). That comes to ~$7300/month.

Of course it varies year to year. We do not explicitly budget $x/year towards car purchases; our withdrawal rate is so low that buying a car every 5 years or so (two cars which we keep for 10 years each)
🤞does not cause undo concern. Likewise with large home expenses such as a new roof.

We routinely under spend (LBYM) and carry the unspent budget $$ over to the next year. But I much prefer underspending than overspending, psychologically.
 
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