We have enough saved and set it up to ride out down turns in the stock market. We have it set up that payments will come in at 3 different times(we will have 3 different accounts )a month instead of just the first of the month and only once a month. I heard from a lot of retirees this is a hard adjustment. Dad has his set on 2. Mom O has hers on 3. Social Security comes in at the first of the month.
I take a sheet of notebook paper each month and deduct ALL the expenses out as I pretty much know what my utilities average and I use the HIGH side of that average. BEFORE we start even thinking of getting groceries or gas or spending money. IT took me a year (we were in a bankruptcy) to save 3 months expenses so I could put in the checking and deduct everything BEFORE we even got our first retirement check (which is Jan 10th). How I did this was add up monthly bills MINUS the things we could go without (Amazon prime, sam's club, netflex -we don't have cable, no groceries and only 2 tanks of gas, health ins costs. Times it by 3 and divided it by 52 as I knew I had a year to save it up. THAT amount was paid into ALLY bank so we wouldn't use it on a automatic withdrawl just like it was a weekly bill. I then added what ever I could save into our regular savings also and stocked piled using sales and coupons.
We still haven't settled on additional savings plan , key requirement when you retire and look at living another 30 some years as several in Hubby's family have lived over 100 and he's not 60 until next year. We have decided only 1 acct will be pulled from for now especially with buying a house and rehabbing it. We don't want to get into the mind frame of Ok we saved what we budgeted so we can spend the rest attitude at times we could save MORE.NOR do we want to run out and buy a ton of things for the new house. (FRUGALWOODS WEB SITE)
CHANGE IN HEALTH INS...OH HEAVENS help me from pulling my hair out... Hubby's company changed ins providers that take affect 1/1/2018 for employees.BUT he retired 12/1/2017 so should have been put on retirement health ins 1/1/2018....NOOOOOO some reason they put the wrong date in and it's going to be end of Jan before that gets switched so I had to fill out paperwork FOR employee to make sure we HAD ins and then will have to do retiree paperwork. AT least they are making sure we are COVERED. Health ins money will go into a money market fund so I can keep that separate from the rest.
We are tracking each month what we spend in gas and where we are going. We know we will be going to visit parents more often and doing things with kids/grandkids. BUT we can't afford to just run all the time (the medical appts and retirement appts have worn us out this month). MOVING will be costly. We are pricing different ways to get it done.
With Daughter moving home (Pray for her as she has 2 places that should open up for her to rent in Jan) will increase the utilities but she brings enough leftovers home from her lunch at work that she covers her own dinners. She has offered to pay for the increase.
I can give myself a headache thinking the changes that will happen in the coming year.
Blessed Be
.gif)
1 week ago
Posts
Did you decide to buy the house that had no plumbing or electricity? If you did, my hat is off to you, and I hope you got it cheap. :D
ReplyDeletestill in process. Contractor doing the work for the FHA 203k loan was waiting on the HVAC contractor to resubmit his paperwork because he was going to put a vent right infront of the patio door we will be putting in. He didn't get the memo about the door but our main guy did catch it BEFORE it went to underwriters. Our mortgage guy is hoping by the end of this week as everything went to a stand still over Christmas break. Owners of house are Motivated to sell as they have already moved out.
DeleteWe are in the same boat of learning how to live on less and what we need and how much for what. We have lived on a monthly budget and only getting paid monthly for so many years that it is normal. The date that we get the disability check varies by as much as 8 days each month which is crazy but I begin to use it on the first of the month so it is okay. We will begin to draw from the 401k in February. The retirement seminar that we attended in the fall was so helpful. Since our investments average 5% annual return we will pull 4% out each year and never touch the principal. We will never run out of money that way. Peace. Of. Mind.!
ReplyDeleteI read The Prudent Homemaker Blog a lot. Brandy has living on less with beauty in her life down pat. We are using Fidelity right now for the 401 K and earing 14%. If I had to do it on my own I would go with Vanguard or Fidelity 50/50 Total market index and total bond index. See if you can find JL Collins book The simple path to wealth. It helped me
DeleteWe planned on the 401K buying a house, a truck and car and paying the medical ins for 3 yrs until SS could kick in... we did not realize that Hubby actually still had a pension also, we thought it rolled over into the 401K when they changed the retirement plan. SO it was never counted on... good for us as it is going to sit. Might use it instead of SS and let that set until we are full benefits in that area.
We are with Vanguard and they did 4 hours of the seminar we attended. It was very helpful. The idea is that over the long haul the market returns an average of 5% annually so if we pull 4% every year we never run out of money. My husband's previous employer will continue to contribute to his 401K retirement account which is separate until he is full retirement age since he was disabled while he was an employee. That will be $8-10K annually as long as we do not touch it and we have no need to. That came as a sweet surprise when he was terminated last week. Since we are debt free and own our house free and clear we are going to be quite well off once we are both full retirement age but we have several years to go. Another useful thing we learned at the seminar is that after age 62 your SS payment increases every month until full retirement age. We had assumed it was one amount at 62 and then another at 66.5 for us. I also was not clear on the fact that I get 50% of my husband's amount since I do not have enough to draw my own after decades of being at home with the kids. It was all good news!
DeleteI am familiar with Brandy's blog but I do not comment there. That is how I found you.
Wow, great minds think alike. I have never used an advisor and most of our funds are in Vanguard 50/50 fund. Also Brandy's blog is one of my favorites.
ReplyDeleteI caught something in your plan for bill paying that caused a problem in mine. Social Security no longer just comes in at the first of the month. They now spread payments through the month. Ours, for example, comes in on the fourth Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteYes, this is true. Ours comes in on the second Wednesday.
ReplyDelete