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Agree. I stopped cable and bought an indoor antenna. I get enough TV. I don't need hundreds of channels (most being duplicates). Don't do much with former friends who belong to the "haves." Since I can't keep up I'm not included. OK with me.
don't forget the cellphone plan with data.... between cable and cellphone you could save as much as $200 per month.
For cell phone I went with consumer cellular. Was $25+ this month but didn't need all the useage so went to the $14.95 plan. Kept the text just in case I ever need it. I think that is $2.38 per month. Less than $3 anyway.
Cable, just basic, comes with the apartment & is $35 per month, added to my rent of $300 per month. And to think I was paying close to $1000 when I had my house. Of course, I was making enough to cover it back then.
In retirement, you lose alot of the expenses. If I look back at stuff I paid for, I shake my head for being so stupid and not finding alternatives:
daycare for 3 kids: $12k per year for each child
summer camp: $4k per kid, luckily I couldn't afford to do this beyond the first summer and found one for $800/kid
Electronic equipment: home theater, all sorts of TVs, audio equipment, computers
Cars: high performance parts, high end cars
work clothes, commuting costs, vacations
there's something to be said about work peer pressure. Someone leases a BMW and everyone else wants to drive something nice. My wife worked for BMW so I always had a new car every 6 months but they paid her peanuts for the privilege.
Now I just drive beat up used cars. They still get me around.
I guess I'm ahead of gunslinger- I buy a cheap car new, maintain it like religion, and drive it until it's junk. I've had two cars in the last 23 years. Not much point in having a neat car when I have no garage to protect it and just drive up and down the same 20-mile stretch to go to and from work. If I lived near interesting driving (and had a garage. and good moderate weather. and and and) I think I'd have a Miata for a second fun car. But as I near retirement, I can't see spending money on cars outside of reliable transportation to work, the vet and the town dump.
I hope to continue to adopt multiple dogs and give to charities. That's something that makes me feel like my job is worth the stress.
Things aren't good for a lot of folks here in 2015..Lots of folks turning to gardening and where possible raising chicken these days. Lots of folks of retirement age today were hit pretty hard from the stock market crash in many ways.I'm not in any spot, we live very much in the same way as working years. Many I know are on tight budgets and they know whats tight today will be tighter with every year going forward.There's a lot of ticking monetary time bombs out there......
Yes. I have told my story many times how I came to be living on around $23,000 a year because of unfortunate circumstances that happened in my life so I won't bore everyone with the retelling of the tale.
But that's about what I live on and I do just fine. I had to relocate from a very over-priced city to one with a much more reasonable COL in order to make it but it was one of the best decisions I ever made not only for financial but for many other reasons as well.
My mom retired on $24k a year and did pretty good and was able to still enjoy life with the simple and best things.. good friends and the internet which she loved. The problem came after having a stroke and needing 24/7 supervision. She's totally with it mentally but it's walking. We want to bring her home but on a Nursing Home Transitional program where my brother and I don't risk losing our jobs to take care of her. The problem is government already a month past the dead line on the budget and there she sits in a nursing home costing the state more money while she is waiting and waiting and waiting until the school kids play nice. It would be a lot cheaper for her to come home. By the way, she's never asked for a dime of help her entire life.
My mom is 75 and lives on take-home of about $28K per year. This is comprised of about $700 in SS, about $1,200 in a survivor's pension (God bless my late stepdad) and about $500 in annuities. About half of the annuity will run out when she's 80. She also has $200-225K in the bank from the sale of her home a few years back. She pays $1,050 in rent and probably $350 in monthly bills (utilities, cell phone, newspaper). She carries zero debt and has always been that way (except for when she had a mortgage). She has a newer car that she paid cash for, and may never need another car. She doesn't really travel or have any expensive hobbies. Every month she's able to put money in savings. If she only had $2,000 per month she would still be OK, although rents are high in our area.
Yours is one of the 2 or 3 posts in which the retiree does not own his or her home, live in subsidized housing or have a family member helping with expenses. I am trying to figure out how your mother only has about $350 in monthly bills. What about medicare? Does she live in one of the few areas in the U.S. where heat or a/c is rarely needed? Subsidized food and water? Does she have no federal or state taxes?
Help me out here. It's not that I don't believe you, it is that I truly would like to figure this out.
I just reported him. He's young, as one other posters commented early in the thread. I'll keep my feelings to myself as to what I'd like to call him. Maybe if enough of you also report him, they'll ban him.
If they are doing their job properly, the moderators will not base anything on the number of reports received. Instead, their actions will be based on the severity of the violation they see combined with the violation history of the poster in question. (The latter, of course, cannot be seen by us). Just stop and think for a moment - if people get together, via DM perhaps, to gang up on someone they don't like or someone they disagree with, it would be a miscarriage of justice to base any actions on the number of reports. Reports, per se, are not necessarily any more rational and objective than the posts they are reporting.
If the system is operating as designed (i.e., free of moderator bias), then one report should be as effective as 20.
I don't normally for debit or checks ndiscussion about living on $25K or less prompted me to review our current living expenses to see if we could or relating to expenses (such as additional income tax payment, transfer to IRA mutual funds) gave me the total 2014 expenses.
The bottom line is that in 2014, our total expenses were ~ $41K with ~ $17K for discretionary spending (vacations, cost of operating/maintaining our plane, health club, rowing club fees). So it looks like we should be able to live with $24K net income even with paying for the current high property tax in NY ($7.5K) and high utility cost (~$1.2K heating bill + $0.5K electric bill).
. I already have a home gym setup and there is really no need to belong to a health club (we joined it mainly for the swimming pool). Besides, we can check into cheap programs such as silver sneakers. We have been doing quite a bit of walking/hiking with the dog in many trails in the area. We can resume our biking hobby. The Hudson Valley rail trail is quite 1st class. There are also free public concerts in various local towns. We are already using the public library. Our high speed FIOS internet/phone bill is only $60/month and I use a Roku box for TV programs. To satisfy my flying need, I can utilize my commercial pilot rating and go towing gliders or get an instructor rating and teach flying. The pay is lousy but the fun is unlimited ;-)
& a low COL area will leave more extra money for fun spending.
That last line....Yes, very true! It's important if you expect 25K/yr income to go live somewhere cheap. $7.5K property tax is equivalent to over $600 a month! That's high end country club HOA rates where I live. Only millionaires live there (not including me). How much deductions (in absolute number) in total income tax, schedule A, can you actually expect when your AGI is $25000?
You've mentioned some things and locales that are very costly and most retirees wouldn't be involved with. Believe it or not, most people who are retired become pretty much, couch potatoes, have too many aches and pains to "work out" and layin' around works just fine for them. Life after 55 or so, is not necessarily a pharmaceutical advertisement scene - and for most, far from it. Just sayin.' We're talking 25K a year income here. That is marginal money.
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