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Bad news re what I spend
Comments
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Silvertabby wrote: »
P.S. Alan, have you also factored in that you don't pay any NI from pension income?
Yes I have. What I did was take the anticipated monthly / annual spend and then work back to calculate what that would be pre-tax, allowing for both tax allowances.0 -
At a glance, you're not going to be doing carpentry/buying microwave/dishwasher(!!! what's wrong with a sink and hot soapy water?? Will also use more water so more expensive)/presents for someone you ain't seen for 17 yrs EVERY month!!!
You claim frugality but spend like a lottery winner...think you really need to get a grip of your spending and then your "number" should reduce substantially.
Med costs - do you not qualify to use the NHS?
£500 a year on car is still much cheaper than buying a new one, be it on a loan or other finance..or buy a new car for £500 and start again...bangernomics can be done for hardly any money (see thread on Motoring board).
Don't want to come over as being harsh, but think you need to look at yourself and your spending habits much, much closer than you appear to have done...
GunJack , nothing wrong with hot water and a soap; I bet it is environmentally friendlier too. There are 4 of us and dishwasher is a bit easier and easier to get my child to do than washing dishes by hand
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I do not claim frugality. I just stated in one of the post what I do NOT spend money on and someone else made a conclusion that I am frugal. My point is that even not spending on all that stuff does not make one frugal because one finds something else to spend on!!
Re NHS- do you have an idea of how severely are shortchanged people who rely on it ? I guess not because everybody does and people know little about medicine .
Re " one off expense "- carpentry, microwave, dishwasher - that is another very important point - they are one off but what happens over the year that there are other "one offs" ! Fences , shed, boiler, kitchen, walls, other appliances, carpets, roofs, insulation, re-doing crumbling garden walls , gravelled areas membranes having limited lifespan , car expenses - in that month I had none- teeth, glasses, clothes , health , holidays- again, there were none of those in that month. So basically everyone there is a "one off" expense.
Re looking at my spending - well , my aim is not exactly to cut my spending. If it was I know what I would cut , I am not completely stupid. I am just pondering an interesting topic of priorities and sharing what is in my head as other than my partner who is not particularly interested in money I have nobody to speak in such a detail about it and the topic fascinates me. If I had no money I probably would have found it less pleasant thing to talk about ; as it stands there are no negative feelings related to it so I enjoy talking about it. The word "dilemma" comes from Greek where "di" means two and "lemma" means premise. Refers usually to difficult choice between two undesirable options.
Often people seem to use this word mistakenly where "quandary" would fit better.0 -
One of the best things I have ever done was to annualise all my costs and set up DDs to transfer the monthly equivalent for each category across to a “Bills” account. It means I know my monthly base-costs for retirement planning. After a while it also has had the happy additional benefits of easing cash-flow, building an emergency fund and completely removing the stress/angst around paying bills.
We have done the same for many years, although we also include an allowance for holidays and gifts in there.
The initial reason was to spread the cost of the 1 off annual bills such as Christmas presents and the summer holiday when the kids were young and it was just my salary.0 -
House maintenance, clothes, teeth, glasses are not one-off expenses they are on-going.
You do need to have a budget for all these things.
Does your partner pay towards the upkeep of the house or are you supporting a family sized home on your income?
If it’s the later then that would explain why your outgoings are high.
Do you need a family sized home in retirement?
Can you afford it?
Almost everyone I know relies on the NHS entirely apart from some more wealthy relatives and even they only pay for test (getting diagnosed is usually the slow bit) and go back on the NHS once diagnosed.
You do realise that private health is going to be incredibly expensive as you get older?0 -
I think if I did this for myself I'd also find it very hard to track where it all goes. That's quite a variation in monthly spending though - lowest is less than half the highest. You do seem quite generous; that's a lot to spend on gifts (by my standards anyway!). As you point out, and having experienced it myself, having adult dependents living with you makes a huge difference to almost everything - food, bills, wear and tear, etc.
Yeah, I hope the expense will be less than what I account for in those invisible details. The difference is because big one offs - medical insurance paying , bathroom done.
Re generosity - I take great joy if I find an idea of a present that is going to be just right. If I have no good idea I will do something notional rather than spend money for the sake of it. Money that I spend on them is within my budget, ie I don't have to borrow to buy them. I save as well. I do not see those £170 having higher value in my retirement fund than spent on the items I bought. Mind , I may say differently when moneystream stops for any reason and I can not afford food!:eek:. Hope friends will feed me then The word "dilemma" comes from Greek where "di" means two and "lemma" means premise. Refers usually to difficult choice between two undesirable options.
Often people seem to use this word mistakenly where "quandary" would fit better.0 -
Spreadsheetman wrote: »That's a good set of categories - almost exactly what I do. I'd missed out on the garden one by lumping it into household maintenance, but there is a discretionary element so it doesn't really belong there.
We use very similar high-level categories but decided to distinguish between "capital" and "revenue" expenditure. So we have:
Garden Improvements - capital spend such as replacing patio a couple of years ago.
Garden General - revenue spend on plants, compost etc.
House Improvements - capital for new kitchen / conservatory etc.
House General - revenue for bits and pieces
Car Purchase
Car Expenses
Broke it down this way about 8 years ago when we did a spate of house / garden improvements as putting these one-off high costs in the general pots was distorting the numbers.
You can go as far as you want with analysing your spending really and I go further than a lot i would think but got in to the habit when it really mattered as money was very tight and just continued with it.0 -
We have done the same for many years, although we also include an allowance for holidays and gifts in there.
The initial reason was to spread the cost of the 1 off annual bills such as Christmas presents and the summer holiday when the kids were young and it was just my salary.
I include a lot of extra stuff in my annualised “bills” including things like depreciation on my car.
There is a big difference between “one-off” costs and “unforeseeable” costs. The one-offs on the OP’s list are largely predictable and could form part of the annualised budgeting.0 -
If you can have a couple of months at around 1600, then is that not your true figure? Ours is around 1000pm for essentials, including 100pm medication for one of our dogs.
But how could it be my true figure if my present lifestyle includes expenses that get my figure far higher on other months? The number is what we need to fund current lifestyle and includes many high ticket items.The word "dilemma" comes from Greek where "di" means two and "lemma" means premise. Refers usually to difficult choice between two undesirable options.
Often people seem to use this word mistakenly where "quandary" would fit better.0 -
That’s fine.
I’d expect a pension pot of £700k to get £28 per annum.
I work on 4% per annum but some people would say that isn’t conservative enough, so that just shows what you are looking at (to clarify this is ballpark).
Do you use it as a figure for sustainable drawdown , i.e. leaving more or less the original o7nt when you dead or you plan for a certain timeframe?The word "dilemma" comes from Greek where "di" means two and "lemma" means premise. Refers usually to difficult choice between two undesirable options.
Often people seem to use this word mistakenly where "quandary" would fit better.0 -
But how could it be my true figure if my present lifestyle includes expenses that get my figure far higher on other months? The number is what we need to fund current lifestyle and includes many high ticket items.
You need to annualise it and do it over several years.
I have my household bills annualised from 2012 so I know it varies (with food) between £8k and £10k per annum.
That will smooth out the big one-offs but still allow for them.
However ultimately this is about cutting your cloth to suit.
If you want to live in a family sized home that needs work and have private medical care then there are costs associated with those.
Ultimately it comes down to earning more, working longer or making radical decisions.
DownsizIng once you have an “empty nest” is not that radical.0
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