Can someone please recommend some guidelines or resources for determining your desired annual spend in retirement? My obstacles are: (1) I don't have a very good handle on what we spend now. We're fortunate to save a ton, but because we make enough to do that without really tracking our spending, I haven't been doing that. I used to use Quicken until about 10 years ago and could itemize almost everything with a very small Miscellaneous percentage, but right now I'm blind. (2) My desired retirement date coincides with Daughter 1 graduating college and Daughter 2 entering college. I have the college costs figured out separate from my retirement savings, so when D1 is (hopefully) on her own, and D2 is being paid for from college funds (except for 2-3 months every year), some current spend should reduce.
Apart from that, I have trouble determining what costs will go up, besides probably medical insurance (I get it thru work but pay for most of it already), and what will go down. Plus we're paying mad crazy taxes based on what we earn now but I have no clue what taxes will be on our lower retirement income.
I'm hoping to find
- a good, secure and trustworthy tool to track current spend automatically if I provide my bank and credit card info
- some good guides of how to adjust for lifestyle changes that come with retiring and kids moving out, etc.
Thanks!