PocketSmith Helps Kath Budget for Her Travels During Retirement

Read how Kath uses PocketSmith to manage her retirement budget and track expenses, allowing her to embrace unexpected opportunities.

Tell us a little about yourself?

I am late 50s… okay, very late 50s! Married to Mike for 31 years with two gorgeous adult children and one son-in-law we are extremely proud of. I ran an international training consulting business for 25 years, which required a lot of travel. 12 years ago, I bought the New Zealand part of the business and settled down to grow it. Mike retired from his business shortly after and was keen for me to join him in retirement. Roughly five years ago, I sold my business, joined him in retirement and suddenly, my goals and priorities changed.

How would you describe your role in your household?

The organizer! Our life is very different now with just the two of us in the house. We complement each other really well. I definitely don’t do all the cooking and shopping! My role here now is as a partner and cohort in adventure.

What drew you to PocketSmith?

We have been good in our married life in keeping to our goals and saving to achieve what we needed. However, when we sat down to complete our first retirement budget, we couldn’t say how much we spent on food and fuel all year. What did our house actually cost us to run each year? We had no specifics, as we had never tracked our costs specifically. It was a general approach. PocketSmith enabled us to track all our expenses and income and realize how far out we were in our first year!

How long have you been with us?

Five years. Since I sold the business.

What do you primarily use PocketSmith for?

Tracking all costs so we can manage our annual budget.

We created a travel budget when we started retirement. PocketSmith allows us to analyze what each travel trip has cost, what we have left for other opportunities in the year, and of course, it helps us plan the next year’s trips!

How has PocketSmith changed the way you do money?

Knowledge is power! We have total transparency to make decisions. We can see month-to-month how we are tracking. We can choose to make changes or change our decisions together.

What are your favorite features?

• The rollover budget feature
• Income and Expense statement
• And, of course, categories and subcategories

Got any tips?

Get started! Start slow. Start small. We have our budgets really close to actual every year now, but that didn’t just happen. It takes time to understand where your money goes! And start to make changes if required.

What’s the best money decision you made in the past 12 months?

We have been invited to go to Japan with some close friends. Our travel spend is at its limit for this year. The instinct is to say no, it’s not in the plan. But life is about opportunities! And making the most of them.

We sat down with our PocketSmith budget, looked at what we could do to make it happen, adjusted a couple of spending plans, and, like that, we are going. Too easy with PocketSmith to make those unplanned decisions. Love those choices!