One of the biggest fears for retirees and near-retirees is that your money won’t last in retirement. Making your money last in retirement for possibly 30 years or more, not knowing what lies ahead is daunting. So this week, I’m sharing with you some ideas from my financial planning background and my experience helping many clients make the transition into retirement with confidence, in order to help you better understand your chances of running out of money in retirement. 

Yesterday, I shared with you my favorite shorthand rule for making sure you have enough assets by the time you retire to maintain your standard of living. 

Today, let’s focus on your lifestyle in retirement. How much will you need to live on in retirement per month? What are you spending right now every month? If you don’t know what’s going out the door each month, finding that out is a critical first step to figuring out if your money will last in retirement. 

I’ve talked about budgeting a lot here on the OMRT, but it’s worth revisiting here. Track your monthly spending for a month. Ideally, you should track for 3-6 months, but just get started with one month. What are you currently spending? How might that spending change in retirement? Are there things like a house or car payment that will go away in retirement? Will you spend more on travel or perhaps you need to earmark some funds for the kitchen remodel you’ve been putting off until retirement. 

So you’ll need to look at what you’re currently spending, and then once you know your baseline, make adjustments to your retirement budget based on the lifestyle changes you expect in retirement. 

That’s it for today!  Thanks for listening. Before you go, I have a special treat for you. If you want the budget worksheet that we use with our clients to help them determine their spending needs in retirement, send me an email at [email protected]. That’s [email protected], and I will send you my retirement budget worksheet. 

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip. 

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