What’s My Income & Expenses?

Identifying your income and expenses is the only way to know whether you’re overspending or underspending. Creating a household budget will identify what you’re doing. Our Finances Section will teach you how to identify your income and expenses; and how to put them together in a household budget. See Finance Section here. In this article, Carmen and I will share some basic information for each category.

What’s My Income As A Senior

We cover senior income in detail here. The most common sources are social security, pensions, and savings. Savings come in a variety of formats including bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and insurance accounts.

Extending Reources

Also, seniors can extend their resources by tapping into government programs for food, housing, and health assistance.

Expenses As A Senior

We cover senior expenses in detail here. However, the big four expense categories are housing, food and entertainment, transportation, and healthcare.

These category costs can increase dramatically if a senior or their spouse gets sick or becomes disabled. For example, housing costs increase when you need to move into assisted living. Also, health care costs go up if you need to hire someone to care for you at home.

Budgeting For Seniors

Once you know your income and expenses, you can create a budget. A budget is income minus your expenses (placed in categories) for a discrete period of time. That time period can be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. Each m month you’ll break even or have a surplus or deficit.

Other Resources

A good article on creating a retirement budget here.