Breaking down living expenses

Basic living is everything you spend in a normal year apart from the goals (the Mexico home and travel). The Living expenses page breaks it into categories so you can see, and change, what it’s made of. Its lines come from your own analysis of a year’s spending, category by category; travel and the Mexico home aren’t among them because they’re goals.

How the total works

The top of the page shows four figures:

• Itemized so far: what the lines you’ve filled in add up to, per year.
• Not yet itemized: the part of the starting figure your lines don’t cover yet. It still counts in full, so the plan never quietly drops spending while you’re working through the list.
• Basic living in the plan: the two together.
• Starting figure: a single total to measure the lines against. When the lines cover it, nothing is added.

Filling in a line

What you do:

1. Find the line under its category (Housing, Food, Health, and so on).
2. Type the amount in Amount.
3. Choose month or year in Per, whichever is easier. Per year shows the yearly figure.
4. Move to the next line. It saves on its own.

As you fill lines in, Not yet itemized shrinks. When every line is in, set Starting figure to $0 so the plan uses your lines alone.

The other columns

• From and To: years a line starts or stops. Blank means from retirement to the end of the plan. The mortgage stops in its payoff year; health insurance before Medicare stops when Medicare starts.
• Rises %/yr: blank means it keeps pace with general inflation. Health lines rise faster (5%). The mortgage is 0% because a fixed payment never rises.
• Flexible: tick it for spending you’d trim in a bad market, like dining out or gifts. Spending guardrails only ever cut flexible lines.

Adding and removing

• + Add a line to … under any category adds a line there.
• + Add a category at the bottom starts a new category.
• ✕ removes a line, after asking.

Most lines come filled in from your Budget spreadsheet: fixed costs from its Monthly tab, and groceries, restaurants, spending money and credit cards as your 2026 averages. Each line’s note says where its figure came from. The Medicare line is an estimate, not from your documents; change it when you know the real premiums.

Not yet itemized compares the starting figure with the lines that apply this year. A line that starts later, like Medicare, is added on top when it starts; one that ends, like the mortgage, drops off when it ends.

Two other lines came from your documents: the mortgage payment (from the lender, to its last payment) and property tax (from the latest bill, rising 2% a year). Change them if they change.

Until Bradley retires his pay covers basic living, so lines count from his retirement year. A scenario that sells the SF home stops the lines under Housing: SF home from the sale year.