Living on $30k or Less

[iris lilies]

Since I just retired, I was feeling a little uneasy about expenses so I tallied all expenses for one month. Our total came to $3200 which inncluded $750 to savings. Once we move and get rid of the mortgage and high property tax, I reckon we can easily live on $30-35K a year. I will need to add DH to my insurance plan when he leaves his current job and that will run around $300 a month. As for the wine, we have found Trader Joe's to greatly reduce that line item amount when we do buy it.

I go after bottles under $10 but I won't drink three buck chuck. Its ok for what it is. I have two go to wines at the moment, one from Columbia Valkey, one feom Chile, and they go for $8.99.

[freshstart]

I am living on $2900 pre-tax a month on long term disability, this is easily done and I saved 20k for an EF from it. I was accepted for SSDI, that will be ~1850 non taxed. LTD will continue to make up the difference to make it $2900 for at best 18 more months. My medical expenses were close to 7k last year but should be less this year as I am not seeing specialists as much and having uncovered testing. No debt, no mortgage. Combined living with parents, they have been letting me slide on the taxes and tend to pay more towards the groceries, I pay other bills. I offered to go live in low income disability housing, they strongly declined that and I am able to do some of my mom's care, which was one of the reasons we combined households, she has an end stage disease.

I am preparing myself to live as if already on $1850 a month. This number seems very low when even just medical expenses are over $700 a month. I am waiting to do a budget because I need to settle a child support matter with the ex (DD could not handle two sick people in the house and chose to move in with her dad, awful but I understand). He is to get over $900 a month, double the support a court would make me pay, from SS and it is back dated to 9/14 so we have offered him the entire settlement even though DD was with me a lot of that time. Then since his is getting double child support, he can either spend that money himself but then I am off the hook for college or the extra half goes into a college fund instead. This was perfect, I would finally be done with this man, there is nothing left he can sue me for, i couldn't wait, the relief was palpable.

Then I just found out LTD usually takes half the child support even though they provided no child support. (I also have to give them the whole settlement I get because what they gave me was considered a loan) They did say if the child support part of SSDI does not go to me as custodial parent, they may not have the right to take half. But it will take months to figure this out. Ugh, I was so close to out of that crappy situation after 14 yrs, ex is not going to be happy if he does not get what he thought he would in child support. And this will generate more legal bills

I have a good amt in retirement savings however my goal is to not touch if at all possible.

there, that's my story of planning to live on a lot less, I just don't know how much less quite yet

[JaneV2.0]

I've been lucky to never have to pungle up much money for health care--I'm paying more for Medicare (I think) than I did when I was working, or afterwards. Health care used to be affordable, remember. So I could live handsomely on 30K, with my house paid off. And I hope to do even better when I downsize to a place with cheaper property taxes. I'm not particularly frugal, but I cut corners when I can.

[herbgeek]

I guess our hobbies are too expensive, oh, and the wine bill.

Same here. We don't have a mortgage, and I'm still aspiring to cut my expenses to that level. We have several expenses loaded early in the year, (like home/car/umbrella insurance that I pay once a year, hubby's annual fee to the chiropractor, some travel that I prepaid) so I'm hoping it will go down over the summer. For the last 3 months, expenses have been around 4800, so obviously I'm a long ways away.

[Teacher Terry]

The first year of retirement I wanted to see if we could live on just our pensions which equal 40k combined but insurance took 10k of that. we did it with a paid off home & cars but it was really tight. No traveling, eating out, etc. WE now live on 75k and spend about 15k/year traveling. I envision when we get to our 70's that will slow and when one car dies we will probably share one. Right now there are many days that we don't use either car. This year I had dental expenses of 30k so we actually spent 105k.

[Gardenarian]

I think we could live on $30,000 a year, but it would be a big change and we would really have to watch our pennies.

Our biggest expenses:

• Health insurance is $760 a month (for 3), but we have a $5000 deductible, so there are a lot of out-of-pocket expenses.
• We are spending a lot on heating/cooling/water since we moved. We need to get our house better insulated; I expect it will be a long time before that pays for itself, even with rebates, even doing a lot of it ourselves.
• Food! DH and DD are big eaters and like fancy food. I'm happy with beans/rice/seasonal produce, but they like fancy juices and coffee and exotic stuff. Mangoes and caviar and bakery bread - it adds up. No wine, but DH is trying all the craft beers that are made around here. (I'm sticking to Guinness. If it ain't broke...)
• Travel has been a big expense the past couple of years. We have no big vacation plans this year, but sadly DH's father has been diagnosed lung cancer - so there will be trips out to Colorado around that. I do see travel as being a pretty big piece of our budget in the coming years; I'm doing lots of research on this.
• DD will be going to college (or SOMETHING) in the next couple of years. She has a college fund that should more than cover tuition and board, but there are likely to be lots of incidental expenses (she plans on doing a lot of study abroad.)
• The two dogs we have cost around $40 per month in food, but you never know what vet expenses may come up. I think the cost of our dogs has been something like $500-1000 per year over the dog's lifespan. Pretty expensive (and well worth it.)

I wonder where the rest of our money goes? We spend very little on clothes, books, electronics. Hmm.

[kally]

wow $125 a month for food is fabulous. But in Canada food just costs more. We would be lucky to frugally pay $600 a month and we only eat veg, no cheese, eggs, dairy or milk.

[Geila]

Well it turns out that our health care premiums are higher than I'd thought - our premiums this year will total $2800 and we budget an additional $500 in flex spending for co-pays and such. The flex funds can be carried over if not used and some years we have extra, some not. This new amount will bring us closer to $30k per year. Right now we pay a higher premium to keep our plan instead of using a lower priced one offered which still the same coverage just through a different provider. We might try that in a couple of years and see how we like it.

Regarding housing, our house is paid off so all we have are property taxes, insurance and utilities. Living in a mild climate, we spend very little on utilities, especially heating and cooling. Summer water is pretty high though.

[Geila]

I know YMOYL is clear about tracking every penny, but we've never tracked expenses. Now I did track closely when we were aggressively paying down our mortgage. That was exciting! I got all caught up in seeing how much interest we would save with each payment. I was getting paid weekly and each of my checks went straight to the credit union to be applied against our principal. That was fun. But neither dh or I have the patience to track our spending. We just make a point of living below our means and spending based on what brings the biggest reward for us.

I do tend to have bursts of impulse buying of unnecessary things in the garden and pets departments and plan to work on that this year. This is an area that needs improvement.

Our biggest expenses are probably food and house improvements. We like food and get lots of good stuff at Costco (meats, nuts, fruit, good coffee, etc) but having good food at home keeps us from eating out or feeling deprived.

Travel tends to be a big expense for most people, but right now isn't one for us. We did travel quite a bit in our 20's and 30's and took 3 nice trips in our early-mid 40's but now it feels like "been there, done that" and we have no urge to go anywhere. I can see someday going back to Paris, but not for a while and I'd be ok if it never happened.

[Geila]

I'm just doing my taxes and I paid 30k on health premiums and medical expenses alone.

Wow. $30k for health care costs for two people? That's a lot. Was this an unusual year with unexpected expenses?