Chapter 2
Determining How Much You Spend
IN THIS CHAPTER
Calculating your monthly and yearly run rates
Discovering the starting point for retirement planning
Finding the best ways to spend money
Using online tools and apps to monitor and measure spending
Finding easy ways to make more and waste less
You might be tempted to jump right into crafting your retirement plan. Wait a second! Let me explain why you need to complete another step first: figuring out your run rate.
Your run rate is how much you spend now. You need to understand how much money it takes to maintain your current standard of living before you can calculate how much you’ll need when you say goodbye to the 9-to-5.
Some other retirement books teach you to figure out what you want your retirement to look like and then figure out how to reach that number. This approach is frustrating. What if you want to retire off the coast of France, but that goal doesn’t match reality?
The biggest determinant of what you need and ...
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