last budget before i fire

[zoro]

i did a case study a few years ago and you all thought I was good to go. My situation is still similar but the networth has increased a bit with stocks etc to around 10 from the 7 I was at. We also have three more apartments in an opportunity zone as an experiment. I'm pretty happy that I can FIRE in the next month.  My budget is still stubbornly high, but these are the actuals from Mint for the last year just taking out rental property expenses etc. It does add things to weird categories but is somewhat close. The uncategorized comes from cash and one of my DW's cards not being in mint for the first part of the year.

I guess I add health insurance to this but reduce, commuting and laundry expenses.  Any other budget changes you think i should be aware of for my FIRE next month?

Category           Annual      Monthly
Home imp.   $16,557.62       $1,379.80
Food & Dining   $14,980.11       $1,248.34
Uncategorized   $14,763.79       $1,230.32
Shopping           $11,060.84       $921.74
Bills & Utilities   $5,706.07       $475.51
Fees & Charges   $4,073.88       $339.49
Gifts & Donatio   $3,599.76       $299.98
Auto & Transport$3,280.87       $273.41
Health & Fitness   $3,206.29       $267.19
Kids                   $2,796.15       $233.01
Entertainment   $1,936.33       $161.36
Business Services$1,495.34       $124.61
Education           $1,438.16       $119.85
Pets                      $859.44       $71.62
Travel               $679.49       $56.62
Personal Care      $363.25       $30.27
Financial              $265.47       $22.12
Misc Expenses       ($17.82)      ($1.49)
property tax   $16,951.00       $1,412.58
Total                $103,996.04       $8,666.34

[soccerluvof4]

Are you remodeling or why are your maintenance costs so high per month? Not sure your living situation.

Food and dining combined with shopping also is very high .

My budget is 8500 a month and am FIRED but the reality is if you have enough in investments which you dont have posted and have a withdrawal percentage figured etc... then your fine.  So for me to feel comfortable with what you have I would want a minimum of 2.6 million and would prefer 3.2 Million but also dont know your age.

Not sure what a 10- a 7 means but if thats Millions then your more than good.

[zoro]

thank you for your insight.
Yes these are the actuals from the last year and I've spent the working from home time laying 3000sqft of wood floors, and I replaced a central air unit myself etc.  I wonder when I retire If this will even go up as I may spend my life fixing stuff.  I dont have anything in there for depreciation or a sinking fund so I think i should probably keep it in at least. Do you think I should be budgeting 2% of the home cost for depreciation so $12k per year?
Also when I was young and stupid I didn't form a new LLC for each new rental building, so my oldest apartments run through my checking account and its difficult for me to segregate everything for the rentals- i.e. I go to home depot and buy paint for home, but i also get some lag bolts for one of the units - those end up in my home expenses. I need to find a better way of doing this.

I've been focusing on the food and dining budget in the last couple of months I have recently got it down to 900/month with Aldi / no eating out (which will be more normal when i don't have a crazy job taking all my time)  I still have two hungry teenagers so I dont think it will go much lower

Asset situation is net worth $10,650,000 including one house we live in $650k , 8 apartments free and clear (except for asset protection mortgages) , $1.4M in 401k/roth IRA, currently $5.5M stocks, $1,650,000 cash . No debt.

[uniwelder]

Instead of posting laster year's actual expenses, it would be more useful to know how much you expect to spend in the future--- have you looked through for a sanity check--- verify the monthly routine expenses and add a margin for sudden hiccups.  Using 2% for your home maintenance would probably give you a conservative figure.  For your travel expenses, I suppose its so low because of Covid this year, but you probably have a vacation budget in mind for normal times. 

Regarding your accounting for the rental properties, just create a separate bank account with its own associated debit/credit card.  Super easy, or am I missing something here?

[zoro]

thanks uniwelder. I posted the actual spend as when i do a budget i often suspect it is aspirationally frugal. when i see people post their budgets on here and a lot of them are tiny, i wonder are they really doing that? or have they just either forgotten some of the stuff they really spend, or are they not including some intermittent capital expense that happens once in a while.  thats why i thought it would be good to look at what was spent rather than what i wanted to spend, if that makes sense.

to be honest it surprised me how much we were spending. it doesn't look like it from the actuals but we do try to be super frugal with most things - i fix everything myself, cars are old, shop at aldi.

good point on the vacation budget, and the rental accounts. for the newer ones i have a bank account for each, but the original ones i just kept it simple, so its hard to segregate.

[uniwelder]

This is probably a good time to go ahead and set up those separate rental accounts, or just one for whatever number of properties.  Maybe not use it yet, just put the security deposits in for now, and when January 2021 rolls around, then switch the finances over.  For three rentals, I just use one separate account to keep track.  I would drive me crazy to have that wrapped up in my personal finances.

I understand what you mean by aspirations vs reality on spending, but you have a few peculiarities (wood flooring, no vacation travel) that threw your numbers off for this past year.  I just meant for you to look through in more detail and see that your actual spending was representative of what you might plan for going forward.

In regards to getting your budget lower, I don't know what to tell you.  My wife and I spend about 30k a year, with no mortgage and a LCOL area, which has been pretty consistent the past 4 years I've been keeping track.  The good news is that you have so much money, you don't have anything to worry about.  Is it possible you're the frugal one and your wife is spending the remainder?

[marty998]

You have $10m of assets and are concerned about not being good to go when spending $100k a year?

Stop and think about that for a moment. Even if your assets return zero, it'll take you 100 years to run that down.

thanks uniwelder. I posted the actual spend as when i do a budget i often suspect it is aspirationally frugal. when i see people post their budgets on here and a lot of them are tiny, i wonder are they really doing that? or have they just either forgotten some of the stuff they really spend, or are they not including some intermittent capital expense that happens once in a while.  thats why i thought it would be good to look at what was spent rather than what i wanted to spend, if that makes sense.

You've totally lost perspective on what the vast majority of people earn and spend. Consequence of being as wealthy as you are and likely the social circle you keep.