It's time to start digging up those Squirrelled Nuts!!!!

badmemory

Do you budget differently once you are retired? I certainly don't. Some things drop out of the budget but others go in. I used to walk to work & sometimes go in joggers. Now when I go out it is petrol & less relaxed clothes. I know that isn't most peoples retirement experience though. I just put more in some catagories than I used to & less in others. My grocery budget has gone down a lot, eating the same but buying more selectively. Put another way I no longer bomb into one supermarket & buy everything, but because I now have some time (& the brain space left) I choose where to buy from.



I do realise that I am fortunate though in that I have a very similar income in retirement (slightly more actually) than I did whilst working, not that it actually happened through luck though. I very seldom tell people in real life this because it seems to make them think that I am rich, I'm not, I just didn't want to ever be poor.

Sea_Shell

I've said up thread (somewhere?), that our budget is "loose".

We've been monitoring our spending over recent years and have decided on a figure of £15-20k, including capital purchases, should be very doable.

We'll always want value for money, so aren't spenders for the sake of it, just because we can!!

I'll post up pot totals and spends over New Year, once we've "closed off the books" for this year.

Stay tuned.

cfw1994

Sea_Shell wrote: »

I've said up thread (somewhere?), that our budget is "loose".

We've been monitoring our spending over recent years and have decided on a figure of £15-20k, including capital purchases, should be very doable.

We'll always want value for money, so aren't spenders for the sake of it, just because we can!!

I'll post up pot totals and spends over New Year, once we've "closed off the books" for this year.

Stay tuned.

I like the sound of a loose budget....
Curious how you track your spending through the year.
Do you spreadsheet things each week (day?!), or use something else to 'categorise' & measure things?

I've been using Quicken 2000 for decades now (fearful it will one day just die on me!) - we also track monies for a small side-business in there - but some many things drop into "general", I think come retirement I may need to sharpen my pencil and figure out a better way!

Sea_Shell

cfw1994 wrote: »

I like the sound of a loose budget....
Curious how you track your spending through the year.
Do you spreadsheet things each week (day?!), or use something else to 'categorise' & measure things?

I've been using Quicken 2000 for decades now (fearful it will one day just die on me!) - we also track monies for a small side-business in there - but some many things drop into "general", I think come retirement I may need to sharpen my pencil and figure out a better way!

My Excel spreadsheet, that I've had for 3 whole years now, notes every item individually (like I've said, I enjoy it and it's a bit of a hobby, but not to everyone's taste/bother), but it makes for accurate picture of what goes where.

Across the top I have the How, Who and What, along with the 12 months of the year.
Each item is then listed on its own row, with regular bills repeated accordingly.
I also show all the cash movements to Reg Savers etc, and also pay in/outs, to satisfy bank criteria (so I can ensure they're all done)
Income items also have their own rows, and separate categories, interest/cashback etc....obviously "salary" can go from this section now!!
Each spend then gets its own row....eg Aldi may have 5-6 rows per month, depending how many times we go shopping.
I use filters to hide all the "blank" cells in a given month, so I see exactly what's relevant to that month.
I then have "SUMIF" formulas to give me month by month breakdowns of what we've spent in what category.

I have 11 categories, being:
Bills
Holidays/Entertainment
Car Running
Groceries
Household
Health/Beauty
Clothes/Shoes
Fuel (car)
Gifts
Fees (Bank/ISA)
Phones/calls

I did have a miscellaneous one too, but I found that I could usually put everything into one of the above, so did away with it.

That reminds me, I need to make a start on the 2020 version.:A

Anonymous101

I'm not sure if its still somewhere on this site but Martin did a spreadsheet that I used to calculate my annual spending about 12 years ago when I first bought a house of my own. It spread the cost of all daily, weekly, monthly and annual bills and then cash flowed them over whatever pay period you worked on.


I've since adapted this over time adding in tabs for Income, mortgage amortisation, Pension tracking and forecasting, Savings account tracking and forecasting, Nett worth tracking and forecasting amongst many others.


I find it helps me keep a multi level picture of my finances so on one level I know what I can "afford" on a monthly basis and I'm not caught out cashflow wise when I might otherwise forget annual bills were due. On another level it helps me forecast when my pension pot might be in danger of hitting the LTA in 20 years and I might want to scale back contributions slightly and invest through my ISA instead.


I don't live my life through my spread sheet like I've heard others say, I possibly update and look at it every week or so but its a very valuable tool for knowing where I am with all things financial.

Sea_Shell

This is how "loose" our budget is for 2020...

Bills / Direct Debits = £320 pm
All other spending (ex Hols) = £600 pm
Holidays / Entertainment = £330 pm

Sub total = £1250 pm, annual £15,000

Capital Expenses (car, household) = £300 pm

Total = £1550 pm, so £18,600 annually.

Other than our bills (and groceries to some extent) all other spends are effectively discretionary and subject to a little massaging during the year!!

lisyloo

cfw1994 wrote: »

Curious how you track your spending
Do you spreadsheet things each week (day?!), or use something else to 'categorise' & measure things?

I have a spreadsheet with a number of categories very similar to the above.
It takes me about 10 minutes per month to go through my current account and credit card to put every transaction into a category.
We already have a seperate account for household so that is very easy as it’s just £390 per month.

Mine (for me alone) is split into

Essential £8491
Disretionary £14939 Including £3k car purchase, £4K travel
Extravagant £4500


I’m sure this looks extravagant to some but just to show that planning and budgeting does not have to equal frugality (although I do money save and have free west end tickets for tonight).

enthusiasticsaver

We use clear checkbook for budgeting in retirement and have 5 monthly budgets which are reset to 0 on the last day of the month when our pensions are paid.
Direct debits/standing orders,
groceries,
entertainment and eating out,
diesel/car park/bridge tolls
Personal spending money for DH and I

About half our monthly income goes on those 5 categories so approx £1200 per month. The other half of our income goes into savings pots although they are all in the same account and recorded in virtual envelopes on clear checkbook. They don't get reset monthly so build up until we need them
Car and e bikes
Holidays
Gifts and donations
House expenses

That tends to work for us and I just record spends daily and reconcile on the last day of the month. Any underspend on our monthly budgets goes into an envelope. We spend more on some things in retirement like hobbies, entertainment and cars as we are still running two and when working my husband had a company car so we only needed to pay for one. My DH also does more DIY now retired so that is higher but will eventually drop although if we pay someone that is more expensive. We do more holidays now than when working too and energy costs have gone up due to us being at home more so our outgoings have not really decreased.

I would like to think we are not extravagant but we could trim our budget considerably if we had to but luckily our pensions cover our lifestyle. At some point we will go down to one car and do less long haul holidays. I have downgraded our gym and leisure club sub to off peak and we were always careful with food spends and we use vouchers/deals where possible for eating out.

Suffolk_lass

I use a spreadsheet with separate workbooks for each account and within each, I record all spend - predicting bills and card liabilities and setting a budget for discretionary things like food shopping.

I also have separate worksheets for slush-fund scraping (Tilly Tidying), any regular savers, bonds, investment totals, and a separate annual payments budget (Charity donations and subscriptions (RSPB, RHS and so on).

In addition at the moment, I have a worksheet record of my Son's debt to me as I paid for a course and he is paying me back, a bit at a month.

Anonymous101

There's lots of different ways people manage their spending but I think the key thing is finding a system that works for you. The level of detail and the method aren't the important things.


What really matters is understanding how much you're spending over a given time period. Until you can have a reasonable stab at knowing how much you're spending per year you can't safely take big steps like retirement IMO.