I still don't see how you figure living in a mortgage free home will cost $11,500 a MONTH. I think you need to review your calculations.
Well, if ya hire the housekeeper, maintenance person for the house and pool, landscaper for the lawns then yeah, I can see a chunk coming out. That said, I always do my own lawns, maintain my own living quarters, we do our own cooking and cleaning so the only things left are the utilities, property tax and grocery items. Less than 2K by my calculations.
Looks like his "loss of interest" is the biggest expense. I don't get that, but whatever. (I want to know where you can get $10,000 a month interest on $250k right now.)
It all sounds pretty phony to me...I have a 2800 sq. ft. home, market valued at $350,000 with no mortgage, and I never heard of such figures a those supplied by Lt. Col.Tanner. Maj. Pollner
That is the advantage of living in a third world country. No land tax, no house tax, my monthly output is electricity 1,500 peso =$25.69 US water 100peso =$1.71 Internet 1,200 =$20.56peso =$20.56 that is it. Easy to live here on a pension
I kept track of my expenses when I first went on Social Security to see what the draw-down would be on my savings. My house is paid off...roughly the same value as yours. (Coming from the DC area, I have to laugh at your 3,000 sq ft valued at $250,000. I'm in the boonies and my value on a 1,300 sq ft home is that much, but I have over 50 acres.) My monthly living expenses (excludes automobile expenses,pocket money, Medical Ins and expenses, etc) that would go away if I were in assisted living are: Groceries, Household $ 350 Misc $ 100 Lowes $ 75 Electric $ 140 Propane $ 20 Firewood $ 50 Land line $ 32 Homeowner Ins $ 61 Umbrella Ins. $ 15 Real Estate Taxes $ 153 Monthly Total $ 996 Annual Total $ 11,952 Honestly,I was shocked at how much "just living" cost me without a mortgage. And the above does not include cell phone, internet, car insurance, gas, car payment (just bought a car in March 2019.)
We don't adhere to a budget. While we're on Social Security, my wife and I both work 30 hours a week for the same online company and have income coming in from a few other places, but I'm thinking we spend about $400-500 on food and miscellaneous household stuff. To be honest, I don't even know what we pay for utilities because my wife has taken care of that for the past several years, but I think our largest utility expense is on heating oil, although that is minimal during the summer months, and it has gone down considerably since we re-insulated the house. Next, I think, would be electricity, which seems unreasonable, but that's partly because if my wife is a month behind on the payments, she talks about it as if that were a one-month bill. She'll start ranting about the electric bill, giving some outrageous amount, but she won't mention that this is for two months, not one. Then, we have our cable Internet and the multiple streaming channels that I have subscribed to and sometimes forgotten about. There are the Internet hosting bills and several other miscellaneous expenses, but that's pretty much it, I think. The house and our land are paid for, although we do have property taxes, which seem low compared to what I was paying when I owned a house in Texas. Hopefully, I can get our wood stove hooked up in the library so that we can use that part of the house in the winter, as that should also cut down on the amount of oil we use, and I can cut all the wood we'll need on our land during the summer. I'm sure there are others. Oh yeah, there are insurance costs but I don't think they're awful because we use the same company to insure our cars, house, and camp up north, so we get a hefty discount for that. Whatever the total might be, there's always enough left over for me to buy stuff.
I have a 2400Sq. ft assessed at 140. I pay 800 and change per annum. Course in NY we don't have hurricanes fire tornadoes or wide spread flooding. I would assume that the DC area would be close to the same.
In Lon’s defense though, he lives in Fresno. Higher property taxes and if he did indeed use “help” then it would cost a bundle just to pay them living wages. Then of course, whether or not he indeed had the more expensive help or someone who perchance escaped the border patrol is another part of the quotient yet unexplored.
If you look at Lon's breakdown of expenses, his "interest" is 10k a month and the regular expenses are $1550. I still want to know where that interest figure is coming from...???
Our house is 2600 sq ft in Harris County TX (Houston). We pay $2400 a year for homeowner's insurance and have no mortgage. I just paid the annual premium last week. Also our property taxes are high compared to other areas.