What do you include in your 'barebones' ERE budget?

[Bankai]

Assuming you consider quitting work with relatively small stash - say you want assets only sufficient to not starve - and you want this to motivate you to add value/do something useful in future instead of just wasting time. What kind of expenses would you include in your 'barebones' amount of capital required? Specifically, do you budget for anything other than housing & food? And what kinds of emergencies would you like to have covered?

For me, this would be:

* all housing related expenses
* no thrills food (about half of what I spend currently, so £50 a month instead of £100)
* £50-£100 a month for everything else (depending on how quickly I want to be out)

Or would you rather stick at work for another few years to be 'fully covered'?

[DutchGirl]

* housing & utilities
* food (less than now)
* transport (bike repair, public transport; less than now)
* taxes (asset tax or capital gains tax - in my country it's asset tax)
* health insurance
* phone & phone bill
* library card

[radamfi]

* library card

Do you have to pay for that in the Netherlands?

[2Birds1Stone]

Housing
Basic nutrition
cheap flip phone
Enough to maintain a bike/scooter
Health/Dental/Medicine

Living in a HCOL area I could "get by" on ~$800-900 USD, so by that measure I am already FI.

I'm planning on pulling the plug ~$420k, or $1,4000/month which will allow for some better food and a little discretionary spending.

[DutchGirl]

* library card

Do you have to pay for that in the Netherlands?

Yup. Libraries aren't free. But they are pretty cheap. It's roughly 30 euros per year, and the subscription is subsidized for low-income people (= not me).

[Farm_or]

They didn't benefit from the Carnegie's philanthropy for public libraries.

It sounds like the op question is "How extreme is your early retirement"?

The chess analogy comes to mind. If you want to make an easy game against yourself, be sure to prioritize your bare bones list. For me, that means the top three categories:

1) Health.
2) Family and friends.
3) Industry.

If an expense doesn't fall into those categories, it should be suspected as discretionary and subject to minimizing or eliminated.

[Forskaren]

I think it is more relevant to think about lists as Jacob describes in his book. From cheapest to most expensive.

One list for housing, from living under the open sky to living in a castle.

Lists:
-Housing
-Food
-Transport
-Etc

Generally, I have a lot of inertia against moving down in cost on the lists, unless I love something cheaper. The first bare bones move would be to stop moving up in costs. Also, it feels strange to not be at the same level or higher than people living on welfare.

[7Wannabe5]

I wouldn't put such a hard line between the income I might expect to earn as a self-employed manager of my investments vs. income I might expect to earn from any other form of self-employment and/or intermittent/flexible/part-time/temporary employment by other. So, the budget to be covered by investment income would depend on my druthers and reasonable expectations for other income. For instance, if my only druther was self-employment of any kind to cover 1 Jacob expense lifestyle, then I would quit with maybe only a few months emergency fund, because I am pretty confident that I could make $600/month working for myself at a variety of tasks for 240 hrs/month @ $2.50/hr.

If I had some more specific ideas of the activities I was going to attempt to monetize, I would also take the specific capital investment and running expenses prior to profit into account. For instance, if my plan was to devote 20 hrs/week towards attempt to earn .5 more than $600/month engaging in activities of snail farming, rare book dealing, and bouncy castle birthday party rental, I would guesstimate around $10,000 venture capital needed.

[EdithKeeler]

I'd include my YMCA membership. Exercise, activities, social interaction, my local one does health screenings, stuff like that periodically, nice pool, and free showers. (Save on water at home). It's also cheap with a sliding scale (here, anyway) based on income.

[TheFIminator]

I would include the following basics:

* housing & utilities
* food
* transport (car, cycle etc)
* health insurance
* phone & internet
* Some fun money (you cant have no fun even if its basic)
* a % for one-off expenses that you can put away in savings