What do you spend money on during retirement

AlexGold009

AlexGold009

New Member
I feel life has not changed as much. I thought I would pay more for health care but actually pay less. I pay more than anticipated on housing. Besides that I like to give my grand children gifts, I like to travel at least once a year, I like to stay fit so pay for a gym membership, and of course go out to eat with friends occasionally.

What do you spend on wether goods or services/entertainment? I have never felt better in my life, and would love to take advantage of all opportunities.

This is my first post.
 

Hi Alex... just popping in to say Hi, pleased to meet you .. and welcome.. I'm in England so I'm just shutting the computer down for the night...

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Hi Alex and welcome to the Forum. I am not officially retired yet, won't be until 11/1/21. I have been using up all my vacation before then.

I will tell you what I don't spend money on - house payments, car payments or any payments like that. Hubby and I wanted to be as debt free as possible before retiring. I still don't feel fully retired yet and my spending habits will probably change but right now we are spending money on movies on Tuesdays ($5 movies all day), a vacation to celebrate my retirement. just joined the YMCA, We were able to buy an SUV last November before the car prices started soaring. I expect we will want to take at least one nice vacation per year. I just paid a lot of money for a dental implant. I had an old root canal that went bad and had to have the tooth pulled. Procedures like this kind of concern me as they are expensive and I don't know what kind of dental insurance we can get.

When we were both working we went out to eat a lot. With the prices of food rising, we are curbing that and cooking at home more, which is OK since we both like my cooking. It will be interesting to see how our spending habits evolve.
 
Our house and my car is paid for. So we pay for insurance, groceries, utilities, gas and my gym membership. We also go out to eat once a week and took at 10-day trip to Greece in September. It has been amazing how much I've saved on clothes.

Home maintenance is by far the largest cost in retirement, over 25%, so not surprising you pay more for housing. We replaced everything... water heaters, air conditioners, refrigerator, washing machine and windows... before I retired. Fingers crossed that this will be enough for us to live in our house for years to come.
 
AlexGold009 - Welcome & Howdy from Texas 🤠

I just retired effective 1-Feb-21. Here is a snapshot of ms gamboolgal and I's Budget Line items that we keep track of.

Since this is the first year of retirement, we have/had quite afew One Off expenses that we did plan and budget for.

We're spending pretty well as planned and taking lots of Road Trips of a Long Weekend to 3 or 4 weeks.
We prefer to drive the back roads and enjoy small town America.

We will fly but try to avoid it - as the last 20 year of work we lived oversea's and the long haul flights with multiple connections ruined Airline Travel for ms gamboolgal and I.
Especially more so now with all the Virus stuff folks have to endure at airports now.

It will be interesting to see the second years expenses vs year 1.

Retirement is wonderful !

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Aunt Bea said:
I guess I’m in the no frills maintenance phase of retirement.

I don’t really need, want, or lack anything that money can buy.
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I'm not much in the "wants" department, either. Somewhere down the line I'm going to have to spring for a new washing machine. I've looked a bit online and am appalled at what washing machines cost nowdays. I just want a plain, garden variety washing machine, which apparently is not the easiest thing to find any more.
 
Many years ago, I worked with a WW2 vet, and he was talking about his time in the service and his pay, which was about $65 a month. I asked him what he spent all that money on, and his answer was a life lesson:

"We spent some on wine, some on fast women, and gambled some. The rest, well, we just spent foolishly."

RIP H Brown.
 

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