Now that I am retired my monthly budget will change starting June 1st. When I was considering retirement, the biggest financial concern I had was the cost of healthcare. My cost for healthcare now looks like this:
Medical Coverage (Includes a Prescription Plan) through the college: My Monthly Cost: $422.00. The college pays $381.81
(The total monthly cost for Medical with Prescription plan is $803.81, of this I pay $422.00 monthly, the college pays the rest)
Dental Coverage: Monthly Cost: $25.75 No College subsidy for Dental
Vision Coverage: Monthly Cost: $3.15 No College Subsidy for Vision
Total cost to me monthly is: $450.90
I searched on the healthcare exchange to see if I could do better there, and I found that a comparable plan would cost me almost 3 times as much. The benefits on my current plan are excellent.
Once I reach age 65 and switch to Medicare my price will reduce significantly, and the college will pay toward a surround plan with prescription coverage.
The college also offers me other retiree perks, such as free use of the gym and pool, library, free tuition for classes and use of computers and printers. I will definitely start using the gym when the college reopens, and it is safe to do so! For now, I am walking every day, weather permitting.
Before I retired, I was pretty easily living on around $1000 a month, so my new goal will be to stay under $1500 a month. This will start in June.
In preparation for retirement I saved up a sizable amount of money to pay for yearly property taxes, car insurance and condo insurance. Since I pay these in full, once per year I don’t count them in my monthly spending budget. I estimate I have about twelve years' worth of these expenses saved. After that I can easily pay them from other investment sources. I also have $30k saved up in a different account as an emergency fund. This is for car repairs, replacing appliances etc. I don’t keep a separate car maintenance fund. It took me a very long time to save up this money, with lots of scrimping, frugal living, and at various points along the way I worked 2 jobs, but now it was all worth it.
So, I am feeling pretty good about my plan for expenses in retirement. If I spend under the goal of $1500 per month, that amount will go into savings to be used for vacations or other fun activities. I am often asked about travel plans now that I am retired, and people are usually surprised that I really have no big desire to travel. When I was younger my husband and I (now ex-husband, we were married for 20 years) traveled extensively, all over the world. We wanted to explore while we were young and able to walk all day and didn’t mind roughing it a little. I am so glad we did! The experiences we had were priceless. Now, I am more than content to take shorter day or weekend trips. I dislike flying now and prefer to drive when I do take a trip. When I was at my brothers on Memorial Day, we started discussions about a summer 2021 vacation to the beach! Something to look forward to.
New Retirement Budget/Healthcare Costs
May 27th, 2020 at 10:35 pm
May 28th, 2020 at 01:30 am 1590629412
May 28th, 2020 at 02:51 am 1590634266
May 28th, 2020 at 10:18 am 1590661091
My English Castle: I was afraid of the same thing, the college has taken a pretty substantial financial hit from COVID closing.
May 28th, 2020 at 05:43 pm 1590687819
I see from your answer above that we are about the same age, but I still plan to work for another ten years due to losing out on a lot of retirement savings when I changed careers in my late 40s and was working only relatively low paying temp jobs.
I'm glad for you that you have the retiree health care coverage to help with those costs. I spent about a decade on individually paid plans and they are definitely pricey!
May 28th, 2020 at 07:02 pm 1590692524
May 29th, 2020 at 06:15 pm 1590776153
May 29th, 2020 at 07:26 pm 1590780360
August 2nd, 2020 at 11:22 pm 1596410549