The Boldin Financial Planner Take control of your plans. Retire earlier, with more security and find financial confidence.
Get expert support Make sure your plan is set up correctly with a coach. Or, talk to a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® from Boldin Advisors for even more guidance and support.
Resources Fuel your financial planning know-how
Blog Your guide to financial planning and retirement
July 3, 2020 • 8 minutes
You may be worried that you have not saved enough for retirement. And the first piece of advice from most financial experts is to tell you to save more! However, there is something much more effective you can do to make sure that you have enough money to live on in retirement.For a secure retirement, first and foremost, you should consider how much you are going to spend!
People who are young and diligent about saving may want to think about how much they will need to save: They have the time and wherewithal to achieve their goal. And, saving as much as possible for retirement is never a bad thing, no matter how old you are.
For those of us closer to retirement–or even those who have already retired–it is probably a little too late to focus on how much we need to save. So what is the secret?
The best thing to focus on now, in order to guarantee a secure retirement, is to plan for and control our future spending. Figure out how much will you spend in retirement. Then, stick to that number.
Figuring out how much you can spend–and figuring out how much you need to save–are really two different answers to the same question. There are at least four ways to say this:
Simple math for retirement planning is pretty straightforward. The equations above leave out the potentially dramatic impact of inflation and investment returns. But, they can give you an idea of how to think about retirement planning:
If you want to know how much you need in savings, you can:
Or, if you want to know how much you can spend every year, you can:
A good retirement calculator can help you with these equations and even offer much more sophisticated projections.
The Boldin Retirement Planneris an easy to use tool that puts you in the driver’s seat for all of the inputs.
This tool is really great no matter if you are trying to figure out how much you need or how much you can spend. This planner is one of the few tools that enables you to set different levels of spending and income for different phases of retirement. You can even set your own projections for optimistic and pessimistic rates of inflation and much more.
For a much more basic analysis, use the simple retirement calculator.
Cutting out your daily latte or cutting down on travel might be smart things to do. However, there are some much more effective ways to cut retirement expenses.
If you are renting or still paying off a mortgage, housing is probably your costliest expense. There are a lot of ways to minimize how much you spend. Best of all, some of these options will also increase your income or liquid assets:
The Boldin Planner lets you model different housing options at different phases of your retirement. Housing is a huge lever for securing your retirement. Reducing this expense or releasing some of your equity can have a very big impact on your ability to feel secure.
Transportation costs can represent a bigger percentage of expenditures, sometimes even more than healthcare. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in 2016, older households spent $8,002 on transportation, ranging from a high of $9,321 for the 55 to 64 age group to a low of $5,091 for the 75-and-older age group.
Heating and cooling can be expensive. Utility bills can be expensive–especially in the heat of summer and the worst of winter. Living in a more temperate area means less of a demand on one of the most expensive systems in any home: the HVAC unit.
Before retirement arrives, the less debt you have the better. Paying off debt entirely isn’t possible for everyone, but the less you owe the more you have to spend on current needs.
The Boldin Retirement Planner will let you see what happens to your finances with and without debt. It can be pretty interesting to model your own situations and experiment with different debt repayment plans.
Retirees often experience lower taxes in retirement because they typically make less money than they did during their working years. Even though taxes decrease the closer you get to retirement, it is still an expense you will want to minimize. PlannerPlus subscribers can see annual estimates for federal, state, and capital gains taxes, review annual taxable income as well as realized capital gains, and specify itemized deductions and property taxes.
Some retirees spend more in their lifetime on out of pocket healthcare costs than they earn in Social Security. You can do a lot to cut those costs by staying healthy and by choosing Supplemental Medicare Coverage carefully. Shopping around for the best supplemental Medicare plan should be done every year.
Your spending in retirement will likely evolve over time. Many experts are now advising clients to plan for slightly higher spending when you retire, and then a tapering down of those expenses over time. The Budgeter in the Boldin Retirement Planner enables you to predict expenses by category and vary your expenditure over time.
Knowing how much you will spend in retirement can save you from financial disaster. Let the Boldin Planner help you figure out a secure path to the future you want.
Planning your retirement by focusing on spending rather than saving puts you in control of what matters most—your quality of life. Estimating how much you’ll spend clarifies how much you truly need, and gives you power to adjust housing, health, and lifestyle choices now. The Boldin Savings Playbook urges securing your foundation—employer match, emergency fund—and then turning to detailed spending models. Use the Boldin Retirement Planner to simulate how spending choices, inflation, taxes, and phases of retirement affect your financial security. When you center your plan on spending, you make smarter, more confident decisions.
Planning around how much you’ll spend shifts the conversation from “how much do I need?” to “can this support my lifestyle?” It anchors decisions to real outcomes. The Boldin Retirement Planner helps model actual spending phases, not just static savings targets.
Start by categorizing expected expenses—housing, health, transport, leisure. Then adjust for inflation and lifestyle changes over time. The Boldin Retirement Planner enables phased spending modeling so you can project evolving needs with clarity.
Yes. Housing is often the single largest expense in retirement. Downsizing or taking on a roommate can dramatically expand your spending ability. The Retirement Planner lets you compare those housing scenarios side by side.
Spending tends to peak early in retirement and taper later. Recognizing those phases helps you allocate resources more efficiently. The Planner’s Budgeter tool lets you map spending by phase so your plan stays realistic—and flexible.
Even in retirement, taxes take a bite out of your spending power. The Planner (especially PlannerPlus) quantifies federal, state, and capital gains tax impacts on your withdrawals so you can adjust spending accordingly.
Updated September 5, 2025
Take financial wellness into your own hands and do it yourself retirement planning: easy, comprehensive, reliable.
Does money buy happiness? It does if you know how to spend it. Find out how to improve your quality of life with the right kind of spending.
Keeping your retirement savings on track helps you meet your retirement goals. That seems like a very simple concept, and in a way it is. But living with that plan every day isn’t quite so simple. Knowing how much one should save for retirement is useful — it can motivate you to take action. And […]
Average retirement spending for those over 65 is $48,872 a year. See average spending in specific categories and how to project your own needs.
