[Reliancepeech]

The biggest assumption to make in projecting a Villages budget is the size of your house and value of your lot, as these have implications on many costs.

The charts shared by HB and Handie confirm the integrity of Villages estimates provided to prospective purchasers. The Villages provided us with excellent initial budget information, which assumed a valuation of house and land of 175,000 and totaled $825 a month. Depending on tax valuation, the figures shared above could be expected to adjust up or down. Large adjustments should be made based on property value. Small tweaks involve overlap, packaged services, or DIY maintenance. Wouldn’t it be a mouthful to have a category called “web-access/phone/cable/newspaper/magazines” or better yet “lawncare/pest control/fertilizer/trimming/pressure-washing/painting/mulch”?

Villages estimates also cover three counties, among which there are differences. The components of your tax bill bear scrutiny. Sumter County ad valorem taxes are paid as a property tax based on the value of your land and building, and fund the school board. The non-ad valorem assessments include Fire, the VCCDD bond (if not paid off), and a maintenance assessment. If your bond is paid off, your budgetary expense is obviously reduced. The bond and the maintenance assessment are not county taxes, but are collected by the county and redistributed back to the VCCDD. An excellent thread elsewhere on TOTV describes the implications of this process.

Discretionary spending is challenging to co-mingle, but two Villages favorites include golf and eating out. A priority golf membership is within a bucket of beans of a grand a year. It buys you reduced greens fees on championship courses (and other benefits like cart trail fee, priority tee times and pool membership.) Three championship rounds a week at $25 to $35 for twenty six weeks on top of a priority membership gets somewhere between $3,000 to 4,000. A couple of lunches and dinners a week are subject to the same math. Since we have only spent time there “on vacation”, I may have a have a skewed viewpoint on dining out frequency, but how often does the “let’s go out for dinner” thing come up?

Health care coverage and medical costs, travel, gifts, and home improvement, furniture or landscaping upgrades are not in the picture yet. Bottom line….rich or poor, it’s nice to have a lot of money. I could handle winning the lottery. ;D