The costs of not working

The typical article about retirement (at least the ones I read) tells you that your expenses will be less in retirement, because you don't have all those costs of working.  Well, in my case, I don't think that's going to be true.  Yes, I no longer have my commuting expense (which was only 8 miles round trip, and I biked some of the time, so it wasn't very large.  I have a Prius and I seldom filled up more than once a month).  Clothing is not a serious expense; I can't go around naked in retirement, and the clothing I wore to work is the same as what I plan to wear in retirement.  And childcare -- that's a distant past memory.

In the other direction, I'm not longer getting free breakfasts and lunch, so my grocery bill is going up (yes, this isn't true for most people, but I suspect a number of Googlers are following this).  I now have to heat my house during the day, so that's an expense 4-5 months of the year (I don't have air conditioning; I hope that being retired doesn't cause me to want to put it in).  I'm drinking a lot more tea during the day, rather than the free beverages at work.  I no longer get my internet service reimbursed. And I am planning on doing some interesting cooking projects (like rediscovering bread making and pasta making) that may increase my food and/or cooking equipment expenses, at least in the short term.  Seems like there are a lot more things increasing than decreasing.

I definitely hope my taxes will go down, but it will be a while before I have a handle on that. Health insurance is going to go up a lot (because Google's subsidy was large.  Mr. Retired-techie (henceforth to be called Mr. R-T) doesn't have such a generous employer, and I don't even want to think about what it would be if I were on COBRA or buying an individual policy.


Most likely the biggest drain on my bank account will be travelling, and I hope to do that often and for a long time.  But that's the subject of a different post.


(I probably should revisit this topic in a few months to describe how the differences work out when I have more actual experience, rather than just starting to notice these things.)