Our August Retirement Budget + YouTube Income | What We Spent After Retiring at 54

We traveled for 17 days in August, and our spending at home changed more than I expected. In this August 2026 retirement budget update, I share our actual expenses after retiring at 54, the lesson travel is teaching us, and my first YouTube paycheck. _________________________________________________________________________________________ 📊 PLAN YOUR RETIREMENT WITH BOLDIN I use Boldin to model retirement scenarios, spending, taxes, and other long-term financial decisions. If you want to build and test your own retirement plan, you can check it out here: https://go.boldin.com/scottunlocked Disclosure: This is an affiliate link. If you purchase a paid Boldin plan through my link, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Our recurring and irregular expenses totaled $3,801 for August. Travel is tracked in a separate budget and is not included in that total. I walk through our recurring monthly expenses, including healthcare, utilities, groceries and miscellaneous household spending, and gasoline. Then I review our irregular expense fund, the role of contingency money, and our year-to-date retirement budget scorecard. A quieter month for irregular expenses doesn’t mean the remaining money is free to spend. Property taxes, medical bills, and other uneven expenses still need to be covered. Later in the video, I share my first YouTube payment, the channel expenses leading up to it, and what remained before taxes. That payment was for July ad revenue received in August. These are our real numbers and the lessons we’re learning as we adjust to life after work. How do you handle travel expenses in retirement? Do you include them in your regular monthly budget or track a separate travel fund? Share what works for you in the comments. CHAPTERS 00:00 How travel changed our August spending 00:47 August budget summary: what’s included 01:14 Recurring monthly expenses an