Transcript:
Easan Arulanantham:
So, in the past, we’ve talked about expenses to plan for in retirement, but what are some expenses that kind of disappear when I retire?
Tom Vaughan:
Ah, that’s a good one, actually, because kind of interesting, there’s quite a few, you know, I’ve seen clothes go down, you know, because you can wear the same clothes more often, even if they get a little bit worn, you’re not, you know, showing up to work every day. Some of this clothes are cheaper, you know, sometimes casual clothes might be cheaper than the more formal clothes you might need for work. Of course, gas can go down, you know, if you’re not traveling back and forth to work, mileage and maintenance on your car can go down, the intervals between when you get your cars, you know, might go down, just because you’re not using them as much, right? So that that saves money. There’s a whole host of things that happen, oh, one of the big ones is sometimes people have, especially towards the end of their career, a lot of money going to the 401k, right, you can put lots of money in there, and all of a sudden, now you’re retired, you don’t have that money going your 401k any longer. And so, you know, that’s sort of a savings in a way, as far as that goes in terms of your cash flow. And so there’s, you know, bunches of things, but there’s also a whole bunch of offsetting things.
Now you’re home every day, I know, on the weekends, I probably spend more money on the weekends than I do, when I’m at work, too busy at work. weekends, I can sit there I can go out do things more often. And, you know, if I’m not working, I could travel, I could spend money on travel, I can go out to eat more often, for example, theoretically, you know, free to eat every meal if I so desire. And so you know, that just when you’re really busy, sometimes there’s, it’s a little harder to spend some of the money. I haven’t seen a huge differential over the years, between what somebody’s spending, you know, prior to retirement versus what they’re spending after, there’s all these rule of thumbs, you know, like 80% of your income, that probably works, especially if you’re putting 10 20% away into savings at the end, you know, but something in that 80 to 100% of what you’re already, you know, spend already earning, you probably need into your retirement, it’s not a big drop off, there’s a lot of offsets, lots of things that you might hobbies that you might do so work is a bit of a hobby for me, I do that I enjoy lots of large parts of it. If I didn’t have work, I’d probably have some other hobbies. Some My hobbies are more expensive than others, you know, and I’ve spent bunches of money on different things over the years. So if I had full time to do hobbies, I might spend more than then on those that I would write. So those are things that kind of offset the savings, at least in my opinion.
Easan Arulanantham:
Yeah, one big expense that always goes away when you retire is your FICA taxes, which is your Social Security and your Medicare taxes. Yeah. And once that disappears, you know, that’s an extra 7%. Tax, your expenses you’re not paying.
Tom Vaughan:
That’s right. Yeah, exactly. Right. That’s, that’s, that’s a good point. Yeah, you’re no longer contributing to that. Most of that’s contributing to Social Security, you’re potentially getting closer, if not already receiving Social Security, which is, you know, just the opposite. So, yeah, those it’s a good point, there’s, there are some savings again, I just seen offsets, for the most part. And it’s it’s good offsets. I mean, it’s kind of fun for most people they’d rather travel and do hobbies and you know, work on the yard and stuff and then then do some of the jobs that they have. Yeah, that’s why retirement is generally considered a lot of fun for by the people that I’ve met.
And travel can probably you can stretch your door a little bit further probably because you don’t have to stick to a schedule anymore. You know, you can take you know return flights on non peak days. Yeah, return on the middle of the week instead of returning on like the Sunday before work.
That’s a good point. Yeah, a lot of my clients travel in those. I mean, who wants to go out and all the families are out when you don’t have to when it’s not as crowded and that generally Yeah, you’ll save money on the on the on the plane ticket. Almost everything he might save some money on Yeah, that’s good point.