Matching money with values

Want More Money in Retirement? Spend Less

 Excerpt:

The financial reward of spending less is striking. Steven Sass, associate director at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, offers this example: Say you're 55 years old, and you plan on retiring in ten years. If you save an extra $1,000 a year, you'll have $10,000 plus investment earnings(in today's dollars). So, if your savings earned 4% above inflation -- you'd have about $12,500 (in today's dollars) at retirement. You could then withdraw about $500 a year in retirement, assuming you choose to spend 4% a year above inflation.

Here's the thing: The real return from this strategy comes from cutting spending to enable the extra savings. When you retire, you'll have actually improved your household finances by $1,500 a year: $1,000 in additional accumulated savings plus $500 in income. "As you approach retirement, and it's clearly too late to significantly add to your retirement savings by saving more, moving to a more sustainable standard of living has a much greater effect," says Sass. "The two effects of saving more and spending less could significantly improve your finances."

An emphasis on greater thrift doesn't have to mean living cheaply -- far from it. Instead, thrift or frugality should push us to match our money with our values. In History of the Thrift Movement in America, a 1920 book by Simon William Straus, Straus argues that thrift includes both saving and spending wisely.

Comment: I've got a lot to learn about thrift. I do know that a $ not spent today is money I will be able to live on in retirement. Next step for us ... house downsizing. Probably won't do until the Spring after we retire. Image source