Retirement planning gets a lot more interesting when the question changes from how much money you have saved to how much you can actually spend each month. A 30-day retirement budget test can expose the difference between a retirement that looks comfortable on paper and one that feels comfortable in real life.
The idea is simple: estimate your future monthly income, build a budget around it, and spend an entire month following that limit. Keep your regular bills, groceries, transportation, and other expenses in the calculation. The goal isn’t to win a contest in deprivation. It’s to discover whether your future budget fits the life you want, while you still have time to make adjustments.
