Tracking Spending as Fun vs. Essential Before Retirement

Full analysis

A listener shared a practical method for building an accurate picture of retirement spending before actually retiring: using a budgeting app called Copilot Money to tag every transaction as either a "fun" expense or a basic essential expense (what Jim Saulnier and Chris Stein call the Minimum Dignity Floor — food, utilities, housing, transportation, health care). After doing this for two years before her planned retirement date, she said she now has a reliable, data-based sense of how much each category costs and how fast each is growing annually.

The hosts had not previously heard of Copilot Money but noted the underlying approach — categorizing every transaction over multiple years before retirement — gives a factual baseline that a rough estimate cannot. For people still working, starting this tracking several years before retirement can prevent one of the most common planning errors: underestimating essential spending or overestimating how much of the budget is discretionary.