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last thing we want to be is a vacation stop in the lives of our kids and grand kids by living far away .
we are part of all their lives weekly and you can't put a price on that .
both our parents moved to florida and pretty much missed all our lives and the lives of their grand kids . we swore it would never be us leaving the kids .
My wife and I have an income of about 55K a year, and we live very well, at least to our standards, We are both in our eighties. Just curious as to other folks situation.
My income isn't very high; however, am doing my best to be as frugal as possible. Thankfully I don't feel as though I'm sacrificing anything.
My biggest expense when I retire at 62 is going to be the health premium cost which as of today will be 19,000 a year for my partner and I to keep my current work health insurance
My biggest expense when I retire at 62 is going to be the health premium cost which as of today will be 19,000 a year for my partner and I to keep my current work health insurance
I would tell the insurance company to go pound sand. That's $57,000 until Medicare kicks in. Unless you have every affliction known to man you could pay any medical expenses out of pocket for those three years.
I would tell the insurance company to go pound sand. That's $57,000 until Medicare kicks in. Unless you have every affliction known to man you could pay any medical expenses out of pocket for those three years.
$57,000 won't go far if you have cancer or open heart surgery.
last thing we want to be is a vacation stop in the lives of our kids and grand kids by living far away .
we are part of all their lives weekly and you can't put a price on that .
both our parents moved to florida and pretty much missed all our lives and the lives of their grand kids . we swore it would never be us leaving the kids .
It is more than weekly for us. Since we have a divided house we share, we put the grandson on the bus every morning. This evening the granddaughter decided to have a bath at our house. That is a rarity but she thinks it is a treat.
They will need to fend for themselves this summer when we travel, but it is going to be reassuring to not be leaving a vacant house.
As far as vehicles go, I buy old Japanese vehicles with cash. My current one is a 93 Nissan pickup, automatic, rear wheel drive. Bought it cash for $2,000, and put another $2,000 or so into it, including a really great stereo, great tires, some body parts that were crunched, work to get it to pass smog test in CA.
The little thing has about 175,000 miles on it, and I expect to get at least 300K out of it and maybe more. Registration and insurance is cheap - just liability and comprehensive. Starts up every time. I just hauled all of my stuff with it to move back to the SF Bay Area into subsidized senior housing. Piled up the bed and hauled a little U-Haul trailer with it. Just drove slow and it handled the load like the little engine that could.
There are lots of really great, dependable used vehicles out there that are cheap to buy, register and insure. When they die, just get another one. In CA, in fact, the state will buy your old one from you for $1,000 (if you're not low income) and $1,500 if you are.
And anybody who would judge me for my little old pickup, ain't anyone I care to know anyway.
The only thing about it I really wish it had - is electric windows so I could more easily open and close the window for my dog's side of the truck :-) These little compact pickups are so handy, though - easy to park, etc. I don't understand why nobody makes them anymore. But, I digress...
As far as groceries, on the west coast my salvage grocer of choice is Grocery Outlet, and you can even find affordable organic stuff there. I will only buy it if it's as cheap, or almost as cheap, as non-organic. But, I can find quite a bit that I can afford at Grocery Outlet, just FYI, in case you have one close to you.
And the Safeway stores usually have a marked down meat bin, where the meat needs to be used or frozen by that date. I've gotten amazing deals in there. Just come home and chop it up and freeze it or throw it in the crock pot, etc.
Something the Dollar Tree is great for, too, is spices and condiments, by the way. I've even gotten small bottles of real vanilla for $1.00! Score.
We live in a high cost of living area but are doing well on about $85K adjusted gross income (of which about $60K is taxable). Not having housing costs has made all the difference. We bought a modest 2 br, 1 ba house in the 1980s and made extra principle payments so that by the time we both stopped working, we owned it free and clear. If we had to buy a house now, with prices averaging over $1 million, I don't think we could swing it.
Being on Medicare with an inexpensive AARP supplement has also been a big help. From age 60, when I was forced to retire, and age 65, I had to pay from $600-something a month for just my own health coverage, and the premiums gradually went up to over $1100 a month. That was a huge burden.
Even when we were both working, we never made close to $240K. It was more like half that.
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