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I was wondering what the consensus is in this forum. Did you make a deliberate cut in your spending as you approached retirement or after retirement? Did you spend less on clothes and eating out. Do you conserve more on trips or travel a lot more? Did you downsize to a smaller house or move to a new house that had a lower cost of living?
I was wondering, because in the old people I know, I notice that they tend to become more frugal. They drive older cars, take the earlybird specials and take advantage of senior discounts or Tuesday specials. So did you make conscience decisions to cut spending. Obviously this would not include spending on medical expenses. I don't know many that would enjoy spending more money on medicine and visits to the doctors office.
I worked until FRA so that I wouldn't be forced to scrimp in retirement.
OTOH, I think my spending habits will change simply because what I do will change. I will probably buy fewer clothes. I may not trade my vehicle in every four years. I will probably travel more, and spend more money on fixing up my camp.
Frugal before and after retirement. No change. We downsized our home from single family(paid off) to a condo(paid off). We do travel more, but, if we were not frugal(and debt free) in every other area, we would not be. We are very happy with our life. We have one pension/one SS(reduced due to offset) in our household. My dh is 67, I am 52, married 32 years. I have mainly been a sahm/sahw except for periodic jobs here and there.
I'm only in my 2nd week of retirement but we have already decided to spend more in certain categories like flying since I can fly more often instead of just weekends.
We bought some electronic gadgets for our plane: an ADS-B receiver so that we can get free on-board weather information, a panel mount USB outlet, a new push-to-talk switch, a low voltage warning light etc.
Yesterday, we checked out a better hangar at another airport. It is much bigger with lots of lights and a nice electric door. It cost $100 more per month but the nice hangar and the fact that it locates at a fenced airport with two runways makes it a no brainer to move. Our current airport has only one N-S runway so it is always a cross wind landing challenge with the prevailing west wind. Without a fence, wild life encounter possibility is also very high (we hit a deer after landing few years ago). Now that I have retired, I want to be able to fly anytime of the day instead of checking for the wind and avoid dusk/dawn flying.
So our situation is very much like mathjak's with the spending going up because of the free time that we have to do things and go places.
I am still a ways out, but tuitions and expenses will be ending only a year or two before retirement. Saving for retirement will end, of course. Kids should be off car insurance and health insurance. Planning to downsize and have either no mortgage payment or a greatly reduced one. Smaller utility bill and smaller grocery bill. We had kids late and youngest 3 are triplets, so my expenses should decrease to less than half what they will be in the last few years before retirement. That is one reason I roll my eyes whenever anyone recommends using a % of current pay as an estimate.
EDIT - We are a family of 6 with 5 in the house and one at college. In 3 years it will likely be just the 2 of us at home, 3 in college and 1 launched. Somewhere between 5 and 8 years from now we should have launched all 4.
Last edited by ReachTheBeach; 11-06-2015 at 09:57 AM..
I spend more, but not a lot more. The main reason is there is more free time to do stuff. A secondary reason is that although I am still frugal, I am a bit less so in retirement. That is consistent with less perceived need to be frugal.
My wife and I are both retired and therefore have the time and money to do what we want, in that lifestyle I'm certain that more is spent than if we worked all day. I think we'll see a big difference in the way boomers spend when compared to the frugality of our parents generation, boomers are pouring a lot of money into the economy, supporting many of those who are working and openly hostile to the boomers prosperity. Ya think they'd be happy that we have anything.
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