In retirement, what budget items did you underestimate or overestimate? (vacations, spouse)

[Trekker99]

House repairs.

I did budget a certain amount of money for repairs(appliances, etc) and periodic maintenance like chimney & duct cleaning, tree trimming.

But we've had bad karma the last couple of years; leaky roof, plumbing problems, sprinkler system etc and those took BIG bites in our budget.

I've bumped up the budget category for house repairs, but it is what it is.

[PNW-type-gal]

Healthcare premiums, by far. The spouse moving to Medicare at 65 dropped our monthly premium by more than $1,000 a month. It is our single largest expense.

[Tall Traveler]

Originally Posted by katharsis

And what items did you overestimate?

(By "items", I mean such things as medical costs, groceries, travel, etc.)

Nothing, I underestimated everything. Fortunately, I overcompensated our savings and investments so it should work out still.

[Cabound1]

Healthcare until ACA came along. Dental. One root canal turned into 4 and 10K. What a bunch of crap that profession is.....I come in with pain and you take 4 tries before you find the offending tooth?

[mathjak107]

Originally Posted by Cabound1

Healthcare until ACA came along. Dental. One root canal turned into 4 and 10K. What a bunch of crap that profession is.....I come in with pain and you take 4 tries before you find the offending tooth?

my wife had that , but the problem was it was more than the one canal that got infected. the actual culprit did not show on the x-ray as really being that bad .

as my dentist explained , as we age the teeth build up calcium in the canal which slowly kills the nerve ... that is why as adults we get far less toothaches then we did as kids ... many times when a tooth is infected they can't really tell but what they do is go by the calcium deposits ... odds are the hurting tooth has the least amount of calcium so the nerve is still active

[Cabound1]

Originally Posted by mathjak107

my wife had that , but the problem was it was more than the one canal that got infected. the actual culprit did not show on the x-ray as really being that bad .

as my dentist explained , as we age the teeth build up calcium in the canal which slowly kills the nerve ... that is why as adults we get far less toothaches then we did as kids ... many times when a tooth is infected they can't really tell but what they do is go by the calcium deposits ... odds are the hurting tooth has the least amount of calcium so the nerve is still active

Good to know. It’s just hard to not feel scammed when you get referred to the specialist (endodontist) and he takes the better part of a month to fix the problem.

[BBCjunkie]

I've never had dental insurance in my life, and have had a history of dental issues, so I wasn't surprised per se by the cost of dental care in retirement. For example, I have 5 crowns (all on molars), the first instance dating from my early 30s and two of them have had to be replaced so far; not one of them ever cost me less than $600. Most were in the $800 range. The newest two, being zirconium, were $1000+.

I had an implant last year and because I more or less assumed they're expensive (any TV ad that says "we'll even discuss financing while you're here" is a big clue, LOL) I was unhappy about the $5000 total cost but not really surprised. What does surprise me is how people manage to afford multiple implants. My DIL's uncle who is in his late 60s mentioned recently that he's had five implants "so far" -- and not for cosmetic reasons. Ouch.

[TheShadow]

My only big underestimate was food costs. There seems to be a big increase in food prices, especially meat/poultry/fish prices. And then those food increases are passed on to restaurants and the cost of restaurant meals climbs. I seem to remember paying about 30% less for restaurant meals just 5 to 6 years ago. And the prices they charge for alcoholic beverages at restaurants and bars has doubled in the last 6 to 8 years.

[bigbear99]

For us:

- home repairs. Past two years: 10K for a perimeter drain repair; 1.5K for furnace repair(in dead of winter no less) 1.5K for roof repairs, only to be told to expect full replacement at 20K within 2-3 years; 1K new washer; 10K new mini-split to fix heating and cooling problems on the upper level; $700 for 2 garage door openers and one set of springs. Turns out services in our rural area are more expensive than in Wash DC!

- Dental. 3 crowns so far for spouse

[AlaskaErik]

I never budgeted during my working years and I don't budget now that I'm retired.