It's about £10k PA for us, but we've no rent or mortgage expenses.
That's still a way off of our £15k although to be fair our figure is not a 'how low can we go figure' as there is £2.5k pa contingency within the £15k for the usual crud that needs to be paid for - dentists, broken kettles, pots of paint blah, blah, blah.
We are pretty fortunate in that we still (even in semi-workie state) have an awful lot more coming in than we spend each year. And we have precisely zero debt of any kind which makes a huge difference.
We have a 20 year cash flow projection that I keep updated as a comfort blanket - mainly in case anything happens to me as it is important to me that Mrs SD is ok financially under those circumstances.
We are quite proud of the fact that we are in a decent position as we enter old age. We've worked at it for close to two decades ie setting out our strategy and then committing to it. Part of our little strategy was to throttle back on our consumerist impulses back when we were earning v.well. We adjusted to that surprisingly easy and looking back we're not entirely sure how we were ever in the conspicuous consumption club; but, sadly, we were.
Our pre-semi-workie plan included these objectives (in no particular order as they say):
Clear all debt.
Never utilise credit cards again.
Never take out a loan of any kind unless we make more money by doing so.
Avoid fashion/impulse/ 'latest, greatest version' purchases.
Buy well and make it last.
Make sure that every penny we have works as hard as it can.
Spend as much as we can afford on things that make us really happy.
Always know our exact financial position at all times and our likely position 20 years forward.
We managed/manage to achieve them all.
Cooked a nice breakfast scrambled eggs ham and avacardo pears on toast washed down with a nice cup of tea. It's now nearly 10-30 time to plan the rest of the day, This evening we are doing a short 20 mile ride. As for the rest of the day i will go and play in my man cave. Life is so good.
