You’ve been working hard your entire life up until the moment you realized that retirement was just around the corner. Any person would be thrilled to retire and live a comfortable life after decades of work. Not so fast though. Remember that after you retire, your monthly income won’t be the same. In retirement, you need to be frugal with saving money to maintain a stable financial future. To help you improve your money-spending habits, we’ve made an extensive list of tips for frugal retirement living.
Key Takeaways:
- Seniors in retirement should consider frugal living and saving money to maintain a financially stable future.
- Retirees can learn to save money effectively by creating a personal budget or working with a financial advisor.
- Some ways to cut down on spending are cooking at home, taking advantage of senior discounts, and using energy-efficient utilities in your home.
- If you want to make a stable income after retiring, consider selling old items or getting a low-impact or slow-paced job.
- Seniors 65 and up can save a lot of money by enrolling in affordable healthcare programs like Medicare or Medicaid.
Do you want to be more frugal with your money? Well, luckily for you, there are many tips on how you can save money and promote frugal retirement living. Some of these tips include lifestyle changes, budgeting properly, taking advantage of discounts, hiring a financial advisor, living in a cheap city, etc.
Planning a Budget
One of the simplest, yet most effective ways of saving money even before retirement is budgeting. Not only are you able to track both monthly income and expenses, but you’ll be able to designate how much money you wish to spend. The most crucial thing about using a budget is keeping track of every penny. Understand what your expenses are in order to efficiently minimize the amount of money lost on non-priority expenses.
Feel free to tinker around with how money is allocated in your budget. There a ton of budgetary sheets out there. For example, the 50-30-20 rule is a standard budgeting technique in which your budget is broken down into wants, needs, and expenses. Settle for the one that best suits, you, and you’ll see results in no time. You can learn more about budgeting and saving in our guide about Ways Seniors can Save Money.
Senior Discounts
There’s a wide range of stores, attractions, and activities in the world with discounts catered specifically towards seniors. If you’ve ever been dissuaded by the price of an item or activity you wanted to partake in, then look no further. Discounts for seniors tend to range from as low as 5% to over 15% percent. Some of these offers can vary depending on the time, date, or location. For instance, you could find a discount of 15% at Kohl’s every Wednesday.
Retailers will play around with their discount rates both in-store and online. So it is important to compare online and in-store discounts before deciding on a particular item. Fortunately, by looking at retailmenot.com, you’ll be able to find a diversity of online discounts across a multitude of stores. You can read our Free Stuff for Seniors guide to find more discounts and free items.
Financial Advisor
What better way to protect and secure your long-time financial investments than hiring a financial advisor? Not only can financial advisors give you the best tips for frugal retirement living, but they can also help you reach your short and long-term financial goals. Involving a financial advisor in your life following retirement is a wise decision because it will help you meet your goals and make the most out of your limited income.
Before choosing an advisor though, sort out what are your priorities for retirement. As soon as you figure this out, you must consider how much you’ll be paying for an advisor’s services. Thankfully there are numerous financial advising entities out there at your disposal that will guarantee you financially sound decisions.
Post-Retirement Work
Income after retirement can be pretty important – especially when Social Security Income benefits only provide so much. You’ve been working for almost your entire life, and now that you’ve retired you have to find ways of dealing with expenses during your retirement? The question is how?
It may sound like finding a job after you retire defeats the purpose of retirement; but for some people with little or nothing to do, starting to work again helps in more ways than one. Not only are you relieving yourself of the boredom of doing nothing, but you start generating extra income that will help you cover those pesky expenses. Consider working jobs that aren’t too demanding such as a cashier at a store or a bagger at a supermarket. The point is to make some money while not stressing yourself that much.
Focus on Your House
Another efficient way of saving money when you retire is to focus on cutting housing expenses. Paying off your mortgage by the age of 65 is anyone’s ideal goal. However, mortgage payments tend to be quite expensive and can be a burden on your wallet. What can you do, though?
The answer is simple. If owning a large home starts to become a hassle for you, you can always consider selling your home/apartment in favor of a much smaller one. As a result, you could potentially halve the costs of paying for mortgage, utility, and property bills in one fell swoop.
Free Events/Activities
Another tip for frugal retirement living is to find free stuff to do! All across America, whether you live in a city or rural town, festivals, parades, and public activities are hosted for free. When you retire, the last thing you want to do is to sit around all day bored out of your mind. Some people capitalize on this time of renewed availability to explore the world around them and partake in fun activities.
Affordable Healthcare
The major source of expenses for any recent retirees will be attributed to health insurance plans. Luckily, this doesn’t have to mean the end of the world for you or your wallet as there are ways of mitigating these costs. The most helpful thing about retiring at the age of 65 is that you’re immediately eligible to apply for Medicare.
For a certain fee per month, Medicare will provide hospitalization services (Part A), routine care (Part B), and prescription drug plans (Part D) across its many parts. Part C or Medicare Advantage will bundle all of these services together into one plan but can be prohibitively expensive for some seniors.
The best thing you can do before enrolling in Medicare is to do your research on the plans available to you and to enroll as early as possible. Doing so provides you with benefits more quickly and saves you money in the long run.
Home Cooking
Retirees who spend a lot of time at home know that eating out can become an expensive habit. One of the simplest tips for frugal retirement living is to cook dinner at home more often. Retirees spend on average $2,769 a year on restaurants and take-out. In the grand scheme of things, buying food instead of cooking is much more costly. If you find that your food expenses need to be cut down, try cooking at home a majority of the time.
Not only are you in control of what you eat, but you’re in control of how much you will be spending on food per week. This is a much healthier alternative that will allow you to save money on unnecessary outside expenses.
Consider Selling Your Car
How else can you further reduce the costs that might be plaguing you? A viable yet intriguing option could be selling your car. If the same car that you commuted to work with every day just sits there without use, then what do you have to lose? Selling your car rids you of paying for car insurance, maintenance, and even weekly gas costs. It is most likely that the car won’t see the same use as it did before, so before holding on to it, perhaps begin to consider how much you’ll save on average by selling it.
Energy Efficiency
Energy utilities tend to be cheap in general across the United States, but that doesn’t mean you can’t minimize the amount you pay per month. By creating and developing an energy-efficient household, you can begin to see monthly expenses drop down a bit.
How would you go about it? Well, you can start off by replacing old light bulbs in the house for LED light bulbs that will last you twice as long, and use half the energy as the standard bulb. In addition, another energy-saving strategy you can utilize involves adding more insulation to your house in order to prevent heat loss. During those cold winter months, the last thing you want is to lose heat and have a high utility bill.
Finally, if you’re looking into long-term cost reductions, then you should consider installing solar panels on your roof. While it may be expensive initially, the amount of money that you are likely to save will dwarf those costs.
Advice For You
Hopefully, some of the strategies listed here will be of use to you in cutting down costs. Retirement can be a very fulfilling period in one’s life, and the last thing anyone needs is to have unnecessary costs that hamper your retirement plans. All in all, if you follow these strategies, you will likely see improvements in your daily life – and more importantly, your wallet!
