Need I rephrase? Many of your posts (it seems to me) refer to what people should have done back when. I believe that people that are now on SS and reacting to proposed changes in that system is another conversation entirely. As several others have explained, s*** happens. We all have our own stories and I won't bore anyone with mine except to say I DID make reasonable decisions. I just didn't see an expensive divorce and a business failure during the 2008 recession coming. I also didn't anticipate some medical expenses, etc. etc. And when someone now tells me what I should have done differently back then, it sort of irritates me.
Perhaps I misunderstood. What advice, beyond trying to stay out of any new debt, should current retirees depending on SS benefits do? You were clearly lucky or wise, so I am certainly willing to listen to that.
The first thing that I’d recommend is that folks learn their spending habits - know where every dollar of your income goes. This should be done prior to building a budget. Why? Because if you just start by building a budget on paper, way too often it won’t be realistic and you’ll end up failing.
I personally use the app ‘Mint’ which is available on my iPad for free. It has the ability to link all credit/debit cards and my banking accounts. I can also record cash purchases. Purchases that I make using credit/debit cards and bank transfers are posted to Mint as they are made. This way I have a record of all of my expenses. At the end of the month, I can evaluate my spending behavior and make a decision as to what I need and what I could do without.
This has an advantage in discovering fraud and hidden fees/subscriptions as well. Only after I’ve determined my current spending habits and eliminated non-essential items would I start making a budget plan.
Of course you have to budget for food and essential things such as propane, car insurance, any premiums, etc. But then I’d set up an item on the budget for funding an emergency fund. At a minimum it should be $1,000, but really needs to be as much as the most expensive thing you would have to replace.
The next item would be sinking funds for non-emergency items. For instance if you know that you tires are getting old, then you might want to build up a fund for replacing them. It might take a while to build that up, but a little each month would soon build up.
On making purchases - shop for quality items which will last. Sears used to have Craftsman tools and they were high quality. I still have a lot of my tools that I bought decades ago and wouldn’t part with them now. I personally try to buy quality now so I don’t have to constantly re-buy the same stuff. I noticed just after Thanksgiving that folks were buying stuff based on what they thought was a great deal. However those items were not sufficient to meet their expectations. I don’t know how many times I heard of someone who bought a 250 Watt Hour ‘solar generator’ that they wanted to power a 120 AC Volt refrigerator. What am I getting at? Spend a good deal of time before making any purchase. Don’t be impulsive.
As another example. I mentioned earlier that I use an iPad. I used to be an MS bigot. But when I retired, I knew that I wanted to travel and mainly boondock. I knew that I would need to conserve my batteries. So I got to wondering if I could use an iPad - mainly because it used much less power than a laptop. I already knew about the App Store and was amazed at how much was there, and how much of it was free. So I made the decision to go iPad. But I didn’t just go to the Apple Store to buy an ipad, instead I searched their web site for refurbished units. I was able to get a great refurbished iPad for about $250 less than a new one. Yes - it took a bit of effort to find that , but it gave me much more pleasure to have gotten it the way I did. Moral - take pleasure in having been patient enough to research your wants, evaluating the options, and accepting used. Don’t let yourself be pressured to buy the newest.
