On September 30 I wrote $4,100 at the top of a fresh page in the green notebook and drew a box around it. Greg looked at it and said, "That's it? For the whole month?" Yes. That's it. That's the point.
Greg plans to retire at about 64, which is still five years off. We've been planning around that day on paper since April of last year, when we first sat down with our real numbers and circled $4,100 a month as our guess for life after his paycheck. This October we decided to stop guessing and try living on it.
Today is the 17th, so we're a little past halfway. This is the midpoint report, and I'll add the final numbers at the end of the month.
How we set it up
Greg still gets his full paycheck and I still do my bookkeeping, about 12 hours a week. For the month, we pretended neither of those existed. Everything above the budget went straight to savings on payday, and we spent only from one checking account with $4,100 in it.
The biggest line in our budget is one we don't actually pay yet. When Greg retires, we'll both need health insurance until Medicare at 65, and that will cost real money. We used $1,150 a month as a placeholder, moved it to savings on October 1, and treated it as gone. That left $2,950 for everything else:
- House and utilities: $882 (property tax set-aside, home and auto insurance, electric, gas, water, trash, phones and internet)
- Groceries and household: $680
- Two vehicles, gas and upkeep: $380
- Eating out and fun: $250
- Gifts, my mother, the cat: $200
- Home upkeep set-aside: $198
- Clothes, haircuts, personal: $150
- Church and giving: $120
- Doctor copays and prescriptions: $90
Where it was easy
The house line, by a mile. With no mortgage since March, the house costs us taxes, insurance and utilities, and most of that is predictable. Our electric is on a fixed rate at 9.4 cents a kilowatt-hour, October weather is kind, and the furnace has barely run. Phones are $70 since we cut to two lines. Internet and one streaming service are what's left of the old cable bill. I could have written the house line in September and been right to within $20.
Church and giving, haircuts and copays were all easy too. They're small and they don't surprise you.
And honestly, the mood was easy. I expected to feel deprived. Mostly I felt organized, which for me is a happy feeling.
Where it pinched
Groceries. By the 16th we'd spent $402 of $680, which puts us on pace for about $780. Two of us still eat more than I budgeted. Some of it is Greg's lunches, some of it is that I cook for my mother on Thursdays before her card game, and some of it is just prices.
The truck. On October 8 the F-150 needed front brakes, and that was $384 at a shop in Springboro. The whole vehicle line for the month is $380. One repair wiped it out, and we still need gas. That's the real lesson of this month: a fixed budget doesn't know your truck is twelve years old.
Eating out. We're at $171 of $250 already, mostly because we kept saying "it's just a sandwich." Greg has started calling the budget "the diet." I'm choosing not to take that personally.
What we're changing
Three changes, and we're making them now, not after the month ends.
First, groceries go to $750, and the extra comes out of eating out and the "everything else" lines. That's a more honest picture of how we live.
Second, car repairs come out of the monthly budget entirely. Starting in November, while Greg is still working, we'll put $100 a month into a separate vehicle fund. The goal is to walk into retirement with a few thousand dollars set aside just for the truck and the car, so one brake job doesn't wreck a month.
Third, we're doing this again. One month tells you a lot, but October is gentle. We want to try a January next, when the gas bill is high and the holidays have just emptied everyone's pockets. Last January our gas bill was $286 during the cold snap. That would pinch.
The usual note: I'm not a planner, and the $1,150 health number is our rough guess, not a quote. If you're thinking about trying a practice month, use your own numbers, and if you can, have someone who does this for a living check the big ones. The small ones you'll figure out by the 8th of the month, usually at a brake shop.
