I know a lot of you all use budgets, I don't because how I've always done it was figure out what my fixed expenses were and the rest was in the flexible spending(groceries, clothes and etc). If money was tight, I spent less on this and if I had more, I was more flexible. As I start looking into my retirement planning, I want to get there faster. I started reading some of the FIRE blogs and learned that for those who used to use YNAB, will appreciate the budgeting through https://aspirebudget.com/ which apparently is very similar. I'm going to look into it more and see if this will help me get to retirement faster.
The FIRE folks talk about having 33x the annual living expenses and living off of 3%. It's farther away than I thought but who knows. After covid, I will talk to my financial planner some more too. I've read that when folks retire, spending typically goes up for the first few years because folks finally get a chance to do the travel and etc they couldn't when they were working. This makes sense to me.
February 4th, 2021 at 06:27 pm 1612463222
I think there are so many variables it's hard to give a rule of thumb across the board. Definitely 33x of expenses but at the same time what if you ex-pat and need even less? What if your expenses do drop A SIGNIFICANT amount during FIRE? It also could go up.
February 7th, 2021 at 10:20 pm 1612736413
I honestly think I have spent less in retirement than I did when I was working since I'm not buying professional clothes, have more time to do things that I often put off. Before the Pandemic we did travel a bit, but could actually go at off times. We spent my first January in a condo on Tybee Island for less than half of what it would have been if it had been vacation time. There are ways to cut expenses.