Final 2012 Paystub and retirement budget.

[Watty]

I just did a simple spreadsheet where I used the numbers off of the final paystub of 2012 to do a quick estimate of what my current spending actually is so that I could see how that relates to my possible retirement budget

I took the yearly Gross pay number and subtracted out;

Federal income tax withholding
State Income tax withholding (I don’t expect a large refund or payment on either)
Medicare
Social security
401K contributions
Group life insurance I am paying

This gives me my annual money that was available to me this year.

(There were other expenses on the paystub like my part of the health insurance, flexible account spending, etc that I will still have in retirement so I left these in. I currently pay for part of my employer provided health insurance so I assumed that what I am paying now will be similar to what a Medicare supplement will cost. )

Outside of my 401K I did not have any large net amount of savings that I added to or withdrew this year so I did not have to adjust for that.

My mortgage will be paid off by the time I retire so I also subtracted out what I paid on my mortgage this year.

I then looked up my social security estimates and subtracted that from the total.

I also have a small pension so I subtracted that out too

This left me with an estimate of what spendable income I would need to come up with in retirement to live like I currently do.

With taxes my needed income to have that amount of money after paying taxes would be higher.

This also does not budget for occasional large expenses like cars, roofs, etc or significant change in lifestyle

This is admittedly a quick and dirty estimate but for something that only takes five minutes to do it seemed to me to be good reality check on how close I am to having enough to be able to retire and what my income goal needs to be.

[Sidney]

This also does not budget for occasional large expenses like cars, roofs, etc

How do you pay for those now?

[jsl11]

Don't forget to include the medicare Part B premium that will be subtracted from your monthly Social Security check.
Jeff

[gkaplan]

How do you have a flexible spending account in retirement?

[Grt2bOutdoors]

Don't forget to include the medicare Part B premium that will be subtracted from your monthly Social Security check.
Jeff

He took that into account.

[Watty]

This also does not budget for occasional large expenses like cars, roofs, etc

How do you pay for those now?

There will need to be additional funds available in addition to calculated normal spending amounts.

[Watty]

How do you have a flexible spending account in retirement?

I won't have one, but that is the reason I did not subtract the flexable spending from my gross pay to find out what I am currentely spending.

[Watty]

Don't forget to include the medicare Part B premium that will be subtracted from your monthly Social Security check.
Jeff

Right now I am paying a couple of hundred dollars a month as my share of the employere provided health insurance, and there is a deductable before the insurance pays much of anything. I figured that this would be in the ballpark of what that and a medicare suplement would cost. This will not be exact but I am just trying to get an aproximate budget number.