RETIREMENT BUDGET PLANNER TEMPLATE HOW TO
RETIREMENT BUDGET PLANNER TEMPLATE SERIES

Over the last 20 years (1992-2011) medical expenses have been increasing at roughly 6.1% annually, while general living expenses (as measured by the CPI-U inflation index) have only increased by about 2.5% annually.

Medical expenses (shown to the left) are separate from non-medical expenses because the former have a significantly higher expected inflation rate.

RETIREMENT BUDGET PLANNER TEMPLATE HOW TO

But by thoughtfully breaking a Retirement Spending Plan into smaller spending units, you can get a better grasp on how to proceed.įigure 1 shows a generalized approach to categorizing the expenses you are likely to encounter in retirement. This flexibility is valuable because Surveys of retirement spending consistently show considerable diversity of retirees' spending patterns.įor people who have not used a written budget to track their spending, getting started can seem daunting. However, you can use the same approach to create retirement spending models that use more than just one budget. The most common type of budget model uses a single budget to describe all retirement expenses. This article focuses on the budget (or expense) model approach for estimating retirement spending. Retirement calculators based on this approach can be quite complex, and it may take you significant time to learn to use such a calculator. This type of budget model is very good at accurately describing spending patterns that are unique to a particular retiree.

RETIREMENT BUDGET PLANNER TEMPLATE SERIES

In addition, it uses a very large number of spending categories, each of which can have its own series of independently-timed step changes. You can think of it as as a Step Change budget model in which each stage could last for as little as one year. But some models apply independent step changes to each of a limited number of spending categories.Ī Flexible Spending budget represents the ultimate in budget modeling complexity. Usually only the total spending is modeled as changing in moving between stages. At the boundary between each stage there is a discontinuous change in real spending, the step change.

It often uses three stages to cover a retiree’s lifespan. The Step Change approach considers retirement as divisible into stages (or phases) within which real spending does not change. Two popular approaches are Step Change budgets and Flexible Spending budgets. You can model changes in real (uninflated) spending as retirement progresses using budgets. Your spending in any year is assumed to fall within the range bounded by these two budgets. The difference between these two budgets is Discretionary spending. The second or Preferred budget represents a higher level of retirement spending that you want to achieve. The first or Essential budget represents the lowest level of retirement spending that you can accept. The Bottom-up approach also gives you a better starting point for projecting how your budget might change as retirement progresses.Ī Dual Budget model is a direct extension of the Bottom-up model, and incorporates two total spending estimates. This approach is more time consuming than the Current Spending approach, but can to produce a better estimate. You then total these category estimates to give you the total spending estimate. Usually you would use a detailed budget worksheet to help ensure that you do not overlook any category of retirement spending. The Bottom-up approach develops a spending estimate for each expense category “from scratch”. You then use these spending changes to arrive at a total spending just after retirement. You then examine each spending category to see what adjustments, either up or down, you anticipate immediately after retirement.

The Current Spending approach starts with your total (current) spending just before retirement. There are two typical approaches, which this article refers to as a Current Spending approach and a Bottom-up approach.

You usually start the budget modeling process by developing a single estimate of your total spending at the start of retirement. Specifically, it takes longer to assemble spending estimates for each budget category. This general approach offers a lot of flexibility for modeling retirement spending patterns, but it has at a price. Their common factor is that they estimate total retirement spending by working with estimates of spending in numerous, smaller budget categories. It is not intended for non-US investors.īudget (or expense) models of retirement spending come in a variety of forms. This article contains details specific to United States (US) investors.

Retirement budget planner template