I figured that I would glide into my golden years feeling wealthy, whole and energized. I even dared to hope for wise.
And yes; I have been accused of being an incurable optimist.
Life, God, the Universe (whatever you call it) evidently, had a different idea for Henri and I. Like lots of other Boomers we are facing our Golden Years with no gold and very little silver.
As much as it pains me to say this; ours is an ordinary late 2000’s story. You know, investments gone bad, home value sinking, a couple of business setbacks and oops. . our stash is gone. And life begins to sound like a bad roll-in-misery blues rift.
We seriously need Plan B.
The place to start is to figure out how we could live on our now vastly reduced expected retirement income -- roughly 1/3 of our current income.
I like our basic life style. Aside from occasional splurges, we do not live extravagantly and aside from our mortgage we really don’t owe anything.
The problem is that our household (mortgage, taxes, insurance, upkeep and utilities) and our medical bills are our biggest expenses. And they are fixed. Everything else is “discretionary”. You can always juggle food, transportation, entertainment and personal care on a monthly basis.
So I started thinking. . . What if we kept our average monthly expenditures for food, transportation, medical bills, entertainment, clothing, and personal care at the same level? What would we have left over for housing costs with our new reduced income?
I brought up Excel and started figuring . . .
The answer is that we have $1000 per month to spend on housing. Figure $300 for utilities which includes phone, internet and cable and that leave $700 for mortgage/rent plus any taxes, upkeep and insurance. Our current HOA dues, insurance and taxes are pretty close to that! So merely paying off our house wouldn’t really do it.
We need to sell the house and move but where the hell can you possibly rent or buy a place for $700 per month?
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