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The best I can recommend is do a long term expense accounting as if your retired for the next year. You then need to determine what expenses you will and won't have once retired. Things like medical insurance with your employer like drug benefits and max out of pocket. Like now you can't anticipate every new expense but can have a idea of where you stand.To leave you on a positive note ;you might be surprised at now much it cost you to work per month if you calculate right on those expenses.
Since we're both frugal and are planning on retiring somewhere where the cost of living is low, going to grow a lot of our own food, cut down to 1 car.. it's very minimal annually and we should be able to retire when we are 52 and 55 respectively(10 years).
We saved up money, enough to buy some land in a rural low-cost area, and to build a house there.
When I got my pension, we found land in a low cost area, bought it, and began building a small farm.
We are living in our new home, it is not complete. We have ran out of savings. So the building process is going very slow now.
We have livestock, garden and greenhouses.
My pension runs about equal to a minimum wage burger flipping job, and my Dw works part time in a grocery.
If this is what you want, you can do it, if you find an area that you like.
Cheap land is still available, rural but close to a city.
Low taxes keep our budget low.
A depressed area makes even my small pension 'look' as if it were much larger.
We are in an area where we see families raising 2 or 3 children, on minimum wage jobs.
It can be done, and it can be fun.
But you need to find a really low cost area.
I enjoy that neighbors here are a mile apart from each other. Dense thick forest all around teeming with moose, deer and turkey. I can fire a rifle from my porch day or night, year around, and nobody cares.
There are way too many factors to have a simple answer. For example my husband and I can live on what his parents just pay in property taxes each year. That's a huge difference.
It all depends on where you live and if you carry any debt.
There are way too many factors to have a simple answer. For example my husband and I can live on what his parents just pay in property taxes each year. That's a huge difference.
It all depends on where you live and if you carry any debt.
Good point!
I have friends who pay $8,000 a year in taxes. From the very start of things, it sets how much they must earn each year, before their mortgage, before their food budget, before anything else. they must have $8,000 each year just to live in that area.
Our taxes on our farm have been $47 each year.
A big difference. Talk to local folks and they all swear that our taxes must be the highest in the nation too.
I have read it many times even here on Cd, folks screaming that my states' taxes are 'high'.
If your annual taxes are under $100, then you can begin to see where else you can save money. Focus it on things YOU want to focus your money on.
We watch Suze Orman every week.
She tells her viewers that they need over US$1 mill in retirement funds
I just shake my head in disbelief.
greg
Retired from Australia in 1995
Now in Malaysia
We watch Suze Orman every week.
She tells her viewers that they need over US$1 mill in retirement funds
I just shake my head in disbelief.
greg
Retired from Australia in 1995
Now in Malaysia
The 'experts' claim you need almost as much as what you were making when you were fully employed. I say, BS. If you are smart and pay off ALL your debts, and live within a budget, you can live on less than half of what your income used to be. If you have the money, you spend it...as the saying goes.
I live on $600-800/month, in an expensive retirement community in Ashland, OR. I used to live in huge 2-story 2800 sq ft house in Maine, and sold it to come to my very sweet trailer in Ashland. (20 years of freezing my **s off was quite enough, and here there are NO bugs!) I USED to spend a lot of money on heating oil and taxes. Not any more. I USED to spend tons of money on gas driving around because everything was 1/2 hour drive away. Not anymore. I walk to everything now. I'm surrounded by 1/2 million dollar homes, but my life-style is just as good as their's with no property taxes and only $60/month for heating, water, sewer.
I have a fence around my trailer, and raised garden beds where I grow tons of veggies in the long growing season. I also walk to the Farmer's Market. I volunteer at the Shakespeare Festival so I can get free tickets to all 11 plays the following season, and volunteer at the Britt Music Festival, same thing, free concerts, and volunteer at the Film Festival, free tickets to the movies. For $100/year I can take all the classes I want the local college/SOLIR program. Life can be rich and full, if you decide you don't need a McMansion for all your 'stuff'.
I am thinking seriously of spending a couple winter months in Malaysia, having read the above (Greg's input on Malaysia...) as I don't like the winter months here. GOOD LUCK, and keep reading the posts here. I have found them to be VERY interesting and rewarding in my search for a better life. And HAPPY NEW YEAR to all!
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