It was great to see facts instead of assumptions - really good.No problem.
Thank you for posting facts about the spending.
As many always point out, it is very household specific when you start to add up all the hobbies, travel, cost of living area where one resides, answer the question of owning one home or one home + vacation home/snow bird home vs. renting one or one + vacation/snow bird rental, charitable giving, RV v.s no RV, boat vs. no boat, different levels of frugality, etc.
Take the largest expense of the big four: housing, transportation, food, healthcare
Even if we look at how the BLS uses the implied rent (or OER known as owner's equivalent rent) of what it would cost to "rent" your home in today's market to get a monthly/annual cost of housing, there is a wide variety in terms of what households are actually spending. They use the implied rent in the current market + utilities to come up with the housing costs. Our household uses what we pay for the -TI of PITI since our mortgage is gone. So our property taxes + insurance + utilities + maintenance would be what we actually spend on our housing on an annual basis. Nothing wrong with the OER and I understand why the BLS uses it, but I don't calculate it in our cost of housing. If I did, our housing costs would be at least another $15,000 per year over what we are spending on housing alone. That's a data point that certainly alters the spending smile during retirement while residing in the home.
That being said, only one of us in our household is retired so I remain open what our actually spending will be going forward once I hit 65. I know our spending as it is now as a single income household + my wife's pension. I have calculated out current costs of Medicare once we both switch to it compared to what we are currently paying under my employer's plan. Food won't change much for us. Transportation won't change much for us. Housing is not going to change much until later in life if, and when needed. We will admit that travel and the potential for grandchildren at some point would be the two opportunities for additional spending beyond our current spend (although we do already travel a lot).
CyclingDuo
Our expenses in retirement are really following the projections we made almost 10 years back now. The core expenses are pretty much within the original forecast adjusted for inflation. And the 'wish' list was just that which is more or less in line with a couple of substitutions along the way.
I must admit that for one reason or another we were very good at tracking expenses and forecasting so it was not a huge surprise. One little surprise is that we are able to 'get' travel at lower rates than anticipated due to our flexibility and time to 'shop' the trips.
Statistics: Posted by smitcat — Sat Jan 17, 2026 10:26 am — Replies 43 — Views 3967