Anyone here tried cutting expenses to see how much they really need to live on in retirement yet?
Wife went crazy on a CC so we changed the budget around. We knew we were wasting money, mostly just being lazy and ordering food and eating out a lot but just how much was a wakeup call. I knew we were burning thru about $600 a week for no good reason but how easy it was to cut those cost down from about 600 to about $150 was a surprise. I also happened to lose about 10 lbs.
To offset the grocery budget we started going to costco for deals on anything we could use a lot of, plus we make the 1.50 hotdog a family outing.
Were doing some smaller things, and cleanup like canceling recuring charges like myfitnesspal, which I don't need if I just stop eating out
In total its around 20 to 25K in unnecessary spending we've identified. It may be more because the vacation budget moved into my half of the $600.
What have you found? It sounds obvious in hindsight but evrry one of those weekly family outings to a restaurant for $100, amounts to 5K a year. For us I think covid got us in a bad habit that got out of control. Now we're shoving that money into a taxable account
Wife went crazy on a CC so we changed the budget around. We knew we were wasting money, mostly just being lazy and ordering food and eating out a lot but just how much was a wakeup call. I knew we were burning thru about $600 a week for no good reason but how easy it was to cut those cost down from about 600 to about $150 was a surprise. I also happened to lose about 10 lbs.
To offset the grocery budget we started going to costco for deals on anything we could use a lot of, plus we make the 1.50 hotdog a family outing.
Were doing some smaller things, and cleanup like canceling recuring charges like myfitnesspal, which I don't need if I just stop eating out
In total its around 20 to 25K in unnecessary spending we've identified. It may be more because the vacation budget moved into my half of the $600.
What have you found? It sounds obvious in hindsight but evrry one of those weekly family outings to a restaurant for $100, amounts to 5K a year. For us I think covid got us in a bad habit that got out of control. Now we're shoving that money into a taxable account