Reply to Anyone transition from big pay/big house/big expense to a low cost, simple, yet fulfilling retirement life?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think it’s a lot easier to do it gradually over time than to do it cold turkey all at once. We are in the camp who did not upgrade the house and cars as the income rose. The kids activities are expensive (but will end eventually) and we do like nice vacations. But we are pretty frugal on the day to day.

If you’ve been living high on the hog for 30+ years, I can’t imagine stopping will be easy. [/quote]

Same. We moved to a “LCOL area” 8 years ago and we spend as much as we did when we were working. Travel is a big line item, but eating out, cars, vet bills/boarding, house repairs, dental bills, etc all add up. I would assume that you’re not going to be happy changing your lifestyle drastically when you retire, and to the extent you get rid of some expenses, others take their place. Our life is “simpler” in many ways — I could never eat again at an expensive downtown steak house and be perfectly happy - but my work expense account paid for that and now the more casual restaurant I eat at is out of my own pocket. You might be willing to sit around all day doing nothing, but you need think about how you are going to spend your days. Even gardening is not cheap if you’re buying plants and fertilizer, etc. We spend $$ because we can, but we considered retiring earlier and I did a lot of budgeting before we retired, and I’m really glad we waited a bit longer.

Another thing - when we moved here, real estate was considerably cheaper than DC, but our area saw an influx with covid and WFH, so real estate has doubled in price. I don’t know of anywhere that is attractive and walkable that is cheap these days. [/quote]

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