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Living Frugally and Happily in Retirement!

Updated on September 8, 2020
Pam Morris profile image

Writing is my passion. I have an undying thirst and quest in the field of writing. Some eat, drink, or use drugs when stressed; I write.

A life without happiness is worthless. It lacks purpose and direction. Having a goal enriches you. The thing is, if your life lacks meaning, you might live with a disturbing feeling that everyone else is moving forward, while you’re behind in the race of life. The tenacity of life is to live it. If you ever felt like you’re in the latter place, it because you have no mission in life, you unfocused, when you should perpetrate focusing your time and energy on planning your financial future. A retirement plan has become a challenge for older adults. No one says it’s easy, but you must understand how to get there financially, to live frugally and happily in retirement.

The joy of retirement is humane, but to gain the leisure, happiness, and the life you’ve always wanted; you need to figure out what you want out of retirement. And to endure it all, and stay comfortable, you need to continue reading about the essence of living frugally and contented in retirement. For happiness and retirement to go together, you must focus on a step-by-step method that is an essential component of your financial journey.

Chances are seniors experience days where they want to hand their boss a resignation letter and live the life of a retiree. While leaving the workforce sounds like a good idea. Elders’ finances are a primary driver behind their decision to continue the work.

If you are weighing the idea, when is the right moment to retire? It is an issue that needs thinking out. More than likely, it will depend on your personal needs, circumstances, and retirement plans to reach your departure goals. Although for most seniors, retirement can be bothersome, and money is an active factor toward the fear of living without a paycheck.

Whether you appear to have been a lot of years off, a few cycles away or counting the days, retirement deserves to bring all the happiness in your life. While that reflects well in theory, when it’s time to retire, the reality can disappoint if you cannot live frugally and happily in retirement.

“Retirement, a time to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, where you want to do it and how you want to do it,” – Catherine Pulsifer

Every day in the way you spend your money, you decide your retirement. A big paycheck or small wages, what you need is goals to work hard to and a solid foundation to stop working and live the life you want. A lot comes into retirement planning. It is not totally about money; it regards learning how to make the most of your social security, maximizing your time and spending habit, and the decisions you will make as you get close to retirement.

Also, if you want to have a decent retirement, you must know what you want. To secure a successful transition, you will need to understand the planning steps, both financially and mentally. For you, it may mean transitioning from a full-time career into a happy, meaningful lifestyle.

Do not let finances take priority over your happiness. Timing is everything; if you retire too early, you might outlast your money. And if you work too long, you will lose out on living life. In retirement, you want the freedom to do, what you want, and when you want, although it is a gift that few humans encounter. Consider these three essential retirement planning steps to secure happier years.

Step 1: Analyze Your Spending, budget, and balance the income: Retirement planning is essential, and the goal is to examine your spending habits and budget to make sure that the expenses do not exceed your salary. Following your spending regularly gives you an understanding of where your money is going, balancing to ensure nothing out of the ordinary coming up.

Step 2: Eliminate unnecessary costs: reducing needless bills is not always easy. It can take time and effort to understand how to lower expenses. If you are wondering where to start, begin with the credit cards. Most of us have at least two to three cards with a high balance. Consolidate the bills and lower the interest fees. If you smoke or drink coffee, you pay an estimate of $185 a month; this is a wasteful bill that you can eliminate. Reduce electricity use by buying energy-efficient light bulbs, and turn off lights, TV, and computers when not in use. Water heaters are a top source of energy use, so lower the thermostat to 120 F.

“Living each day as if it were your last doesn't mean your last day of retirement on a remote island. It means to live fully, authentically and spontaneously with nothing being held back.” – Jack Canfield

Step 3: Evaluate Retirement Risks. The purpose of evaluating is to address the concerns before retirement and eliminate all risks to ensure you do not outlive your assets.

Retirement is something older Americans look forward to, but living on the income can be a test case if they do not get a pension plan. Whether you retire in a year or have two, three, four to five years, no matter your circumstances, it is critical to achieving financial freedom. You can own the power to control your retirement destiny with an understanding of adopting a frugal lifestyle.

Retirement can lead to one of the biggest financial challenges if you do not manage your money well. Especially after leaving a working career, it means changing your lifestyle to adapt to spending less and saving more. With that in mind, you must very well know how much your debt totals each month, where your money is going, and saving tips.

Hence, adopting a frugal lifestyle is a necessity to live and enjoy a comfortable retirement. It is a fiscal step where you make sure you control your retirement destiny. To help get started, creating a budget, and setting goals is the way to achieve smarter spending habits. A budget will help you realize the critical areas in your spending habits, and it will serve you to increase your retirement income.

The responsibility for a carefree retirement rests entirely on the shoulders of the retirees. It has changed in recent decades. A survey reveals only one in four retirees are confident that they will have enough money to live pleasantly during their retirement years.

Some of us have become our own worst enemies, to put a stop to the invasion. We must take responsibility for the person looking in the mirror. You must learn how to identify a frugal lifestyle. Steps that will secure you to experience fewer financial worries. Here are five retirement concerns seniors face.

1. Retirement goals not met. You have a final number in mind on how much money you want to have in retirement; it is saving at least three to six months’ worth of living expenses saved for emergencies. But the long-term financial goal you crave is not met, so you do not is fed up to maintain a decent retirement. Senior’s biggest fear is going for broke in retirement.

2. Aging seniors with no savings. As life expectancy grows and health-care costs rise, for many seniors, the answer to a lack of savings means feeling significant financial pressure and working longer and longer in the workforce.

3. An unplanned emergency: the likelihood of recovery from an emergency often depends on the planning and preparation did. And since most seniors do not get the financial resource to put back money for an unforeseen emergency, they worry. Sometimes you don’t need a lot of money to plan. Consider the circumstances of your everyday life. The reality of a disaster situation is such as to happen, whether it medical, home breakage expense, fire, education, or auto expense.

“The joy of retirement comes in those everyday pursuits that embrace the joy of life; to experience daily the freedom to invest one's life-long knowledge for the betterment of others; and, to allocate time to pursuits that only received, in years of working, a fleeting moment.” – Byron Pulsifer

4. Maintaining good health. It is no secret a person's lifestyle, habits, and daily activities have a tremendous impact on their health and brain. Memory loss can occur at any age, but it has been proven that memory lapse is the second thing to leave older adults. For this reason, older adults are focusing on managing their physical and mental health as they age. Seniors are worried about maintaining good health because the study shows one in three is living with chronic diseases.

5. Healthcare Cost. Many older Americans have Medicare, Medicare, or both and yet, struggle to pay their medical bills. There are various reasons for unforeseen medical expenses, but the primary aim is high prescription drug prices. Depending on the analysis, seniors receive an average of 54.5 prescriptions per year or 4.5 prescription drugs per month, and the yearly cost is $20,000 or $30,000. The out-of-pocket cost can range from $2,000 to $4,000 causing financial stress. More old Americans must make some intelligent decisions by choosing frugal living, deciding where they live, what food to eat, and many other sorts of essential services to afford their healthcare cost.

Some might associate frugality with an austere lifestyle, but there is no connection. Living frugally means you are allowing yourself to spend money on what you value while saving on the things you need. Here are three tips that can help you adjust to living a frugal lifestyle in your retirement. I outline each piece of advice to provide you the freedom to save money and the power to make smarter spending habits.

“Retirement is like a long vacation in Las Vegas. The goal is to enjoy it the fullest, but not so fully that you run out of money.” – Jonathan Clements

Retirement has unfolded so much that older Americans face some severe difficulties. And the way the economy is operating, it seems as if the problem will become much more acute in the next decade.

With all the lay-off and closing of companies, employees no longer work for the same corporation for the long term to construct a comfortable pension. The average job enduring makes it hard to create a pension. Seniors are hesitant to retire because they do not have the financial resources at their disposal.

For some seniors, retirement is a lonely time of decline, to others, it is a time of relaxation and leisure, although, for many, it can bring about an increased feeling of anxiety about how to subsidize their retirement. If a retiree knows how to adopt a frugal lifestyle, it can change their perception so they will take full advantage of the achievement of a lifetime of hard work.

Many older workers are eager to retire. It is something everybody deserves after working many hard years of labor. After retirement, the income will not be nearly the same, which means your lifestyle will change tremendously. Thus, frugality is meaningful to live comfortably, retire as you begin your journey toward enjoying the fruit of your labor.

Despite what you may think, retirement can be part of the biggest financial challenges any senior might face. Besides, if you do not make sure your expenses match what is coming in each month, you are giving away control to your circumstances. To avoid some of the biggest worries older Americans are overlooking in retirement, you need to make sure you are giving every dollar a function.

Tips for adopting a frugal lifestyle in retirement

1. Keep track of your spending habits: Now that you are living on a fixed income, you need to track everything. Create a budget that divides the expenses by category. For example, each section should include mortgage/rent, food expenses, water bill, car insurance, utility, and so on. A budget will assist in the temptation to overspend and guide you into saving more toward retirement.

2. Downsize to a smaller living Method: By the time a person reaches retirement age, the children have grown up and moved away, and the seniors find themselves in too large of a home. Therefore, there is no need to have an enormous family home for just you and if it a significant other. It is time to modify your home to save money each month.

Often, downsizing the home means it necessary to adjust your lifestyle. More than likely, you will not require as much furniture in a smaller place. Selling what you do not need will add to your retirement income.

3. Identify your end goal. Living on a retirement income means you must increase your monthly income and be able to distinguish your end goal. It is essential to adopt a frugal lifestyle. But it is something that will not happen overnight. To know end goals for the long-term and secure the benefits, you must have goals, outline them, and track your progress.

Frugal living does not mean you will enjoy endless travel and a stress-free lifestyle. It means you are smarter with your money. The key to adopting a frugal lifestyle is to ensure that you never run out of money during retirement.

Living within your means and learning to live a frugal lifestyle can be a challenge, but self-discipline is a hard goal to master, especially if you are used to a more lavishing life throughout a work career.

Do you agree with this quote, “Retirement, a time to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, where you want to do it, and how you want to do it by Catherine Pulsifer?"

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Sergeant H "Retirement Day" WINNER OF THE LAS VEGAS SILVER ACE AWARD

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

© 2020 Pam Morris

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