Love it or hate it, budgeting is an essential part of financial success. In this episode, Eric and Jason share their own financial details using a simple, model budget and offer tips for making budgeting a less daunting task. See the show notes below, which include the full details of our budgets.
Show notes may be found below the video
Show Notes
Eric + Laura’s Budget (click to enlarge)
Jason + Lorri’s Budget (click to enlarge)
Essential Background:
- Even if you put good effort into creating your FIRE budget, it’s easy to miss some very important items. In “My FIRE Budget Didn’t Account for This“, we discuss these commonly forgotten or underestimated expenses, including healthcare costs, taxes, dealing with inflation, and more.
- Healthcare is among the largest FIRE budget concerns. Have you seen our two prior episodes on the topic? The first, “Healthcare is my Second Highest Cost in Early Retirement” captures our conversation about retiree healthcare that we had with an HR benefits expert. The second, “Don’t Let the Cost of Healthcare Break Your Early Retirement Plan” picks up where the first episode left off, digging into ACA subsidies, selecting plans, and considering the total cost of care.
Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins, is discussed often in the FIRE community. As Eric shared in this episode, it’s intended as a “practical guide on how to get the most out of your money—and out of your life”. If you like the aim of prioritizing memorable experiences far ahead of simply accumulating money for later in life, you’ll definitely want to check it out.
Lumpy spending in retirement is another commonly discussed budget issue. Sinking funds are only one way to think about these occasional – and sometimes very large expenses. In the Reddit post “Budgeting for ‘one time expenses’ in retirement” and the comments, you’ll find some thoughts on this topic.
Eric mentioned Empower (formerly Personal Capital ) for summarizing his portfolio performance. We both use and really like this free tool for tracking investment accounts, understanding asset allocation + rebalancing opportunities, and monitoring net worth. Empower employs a simple account linking process to make it a more automated experience. Give it a try risk-free! (affiliate link; free program )
In this episode, Jason mentioned that he uses the software called YNAB to budget. What is YNAB? You Need a Budget is a popular budgeting tool for many in the FIRE community. If manual spreadsheets aren’t your thing or you’ve struggled with budgeting in the past, this may be a good solution. YNAB has a generous, free 34-day trial so you can see how well it works to help you understand and control spending. (affiliate link; no credit card needed )
You can find information on the tools we mention in each episode along with additional information in the Resources section of this site.
- Eric’s business: 30X40 Design Workshop
- Eric’s YouTube Channel
- Our podcast