Happy St. Paddy’s Day! ☘️ I know I said I’d post updates at the end of the month, but we did a COMPLETE OVERHAUL of our original plan and wanted to chronicle it here.
This week, I enjoyed two free concerts, and we stayed up past midnight Saturday to endure a crazy rainstorm and be sure there were no tornado touchdowns. Thankfully, nothing came near us! Praying for all those affected. 🙏
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My friends and I took advantage of a Pi Day deal ($3.14 pizza splurge!) and unexpectedly happened upon a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, bagpipes and all! There was also an amazing funk band. Very fun time! The second concert was a No Doubt cover band Justin and I came across as we walked the pups. They were very good!
Before then, I did my own nails and was really careful to have enough time not to bump them on something. Win! And I seriously love this hat. So true! 😂 (But I’m obviously trying not to; the point of this whole experiment!)
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Ok, so now the info about our DO-OVER…
I realized that it was not possible for us to have a house payment and a car payment and live off of Social Security. This is my first big lesson. Justin went to visit family last week and though he had no lodging expense, there was some food expense. That weekend, I also went to visit a friend, but no lodging expense there either. (I got some cute earrings at a community closet sale for $1 each! Except for the last pair, those were $2.)
Then we began to look at the food we had stocked up on and realized we were already nearly over budget —but we hadn’t really done anything crazy and the out-to-eat rendezvous was a necessity due to the trip.
So, this is definitely going to be Justin and I’s first goal before retirement — no house payment, and no car payment. Moving forward, we are going to include the actual amount of our internet, electric, entertainment and water bills instead of removing those beforehand, and we deducted an amount for our annual property taxes. (Which jumped drastically last year, sheesh.)
Our updated budget looks like this:
Average social security: $1,976
- -$417 my half homeowners insurance, car insurance, pet, life, and umbrella insurance
- -$132 my half property taxes
- -$32 one dog pet meds
=$1,395 x 2 = $2,790 for two people monthly to cover bills, medical expenses, groceries, essentials, gifts, etc. One big reason for this change and realization is our medical expenses, which I haven’t touched on until now. Justin and I both have a lot of out-of-pocket medical expenses that insurance doesn’t cover. His prescriptions run several hundred a month, and our doctor doesn’t take insurance. After having been really sick for about a year and making a full recovery, I don’t skip my bundle of supplements to keep myself as healthy as possible. That’s probably one of the biggest reasons we’d need to make sure we had no mortgage and no car payment heading into retirement.
(Of course, whether or not Social Security will be available when Justin and I reach retirement age is a completely different story. Though we are doing this experiment as a learning opportunity to save, it’s prudent to expect Social Security may not be there in full for those who plan to retire after 2035. In this case, we will plan to make sure to have enough savings for when we plan to retire.)
FIRST BIG LESSON: Make sure not to have a mortgage payment or car payment in retirement, especially if Social Security is the only source of income.
If we have any money left over, we will save the rest for a rainy day. ⛈️
Speaking of rain, someone caught an amazing shot of the storm we had touching down in Atlanta. See it here!
ALT MONEY CHOICES 