CAinCA said:Well boys, I'm about to find out how early retirement is. I submitted my resignation today. My last day is next Friday, although I'll be on the payroll until the 31st.
Congratulations! I hope it's run and relaxing!
My last day is next Thursday, but I promised them I will come in for a day after Christmas to clean out my desk and computer and show them a few important file locations. I had planned on it being Friday as well, but something came up.
Cheers to you!
In reply to Duke :
You reminded me of some panic level meetings I had in my last week. I had zero sympathy since everyone had known the exact date for a really long time.
In reply to alfadriver :
That was DW's experience. Mostly because she told her supervisor 3 months in advance, but he declined to pass that tidbit of information any farther up the management chain. The first the rest of leadership heard about it was shortly after she walked into HR and filed the paperwork, 2 weeks before the last day.
There isn't much panic here, because my bosses have known for a year. The only reason I'm coming in over the break is that I planned to stay through Friday the 20th, but I ended up having a conflict.
In reply to Duke :
Be ready. They scheduled a one more last sec meeting the morning I was done, and the rescheduled it to the afternoon. But I had to be done by noon, so I have no idea how that turned out. My computer and phone had to be turned in, so no way to contact anyone after that point.
alfadriver said:In reply to Duke :
...I had to be done by noon, so I have no idea how that turned out.
I had he shock of my life last night & may start thinking along early retirement lines. I've been planning for 7 years from now, and expected to hit my "number" in about 5 years. The stock market has been good to me this year and I realized last night that I have achieved my retirement saving goal. I don't obsessively follow the market, just been following "the Oracle of Omaha's" recommendation to start saving regularly, put it in a low expense ratio mutual fund indexed to the S&P, and keep doin it. Now I got a lot of things to figure out...
I'll have to update the thread I started, but I'm now about 18 months into retirement. However, taking an early retirement I find that it's more of a pivot than actually sit on my couch retirement. I am "working" as much now as I ever did. The huge difference is that I do them because I want to instead of need to. Everything I do is at my discretion and I set my own schedule. There's no pressure, no corporate ladder to climb or deadlines to meet. I am so happy I saved as much as I did in my younger years and that I decided to take this journey. While I can't live like a king, I can live comfortably and have fun doing it.
Duke said:CAinCA said:Well boys, I'm about to find out how early retirement is. I submitted my resignation today. My last day is next Friday, although I'll be on the payroll until the 31st.
Congratulations! I hope it's run and relaxing!
My last day is next Thursday, but I promised them I will come in for a day after Christmas to clean out my desk and computer and show them a few important file locations. I had planned on it being Friday as well, but something came up.
Cheers to you!
Congratulations to you too!
Can we talk (generalized) numbers for a bit?
Those of you who have pulled the ripcord recently - Are yo using the 4% rule? Are you drawing on principal? How long do you envision your retirement lasting? How are you funding healthcare?
I'm 41. I looked at my portfolio recently and I've reached the "I could probably retire on this" point, but am now kicking around the "If I wanted to be comfortable, how much extra income would I want?", or "how much more should I save?".
In reply to TravisTheHuman :
At the beginning of the year I thought I could probably retire but we wanted to build up more of a nest egg to help the kids get a good start. I was planning to work 18 more months until I was 55. Then my company's stock basically tripled in value since the beginning of the year. In May I had a heart attack and decided that I was going to retire when my medical leave was up.
We can live comfortably on about 2-2.5%. We will probably spend more than that because we want to travel and help out our kids. I hope to live another 35 years. I'm also going to be doing Roth conversions every year for the rest of my life. If everything goes well we should be able to pass on most of our principal amount tax free to our kids.
In reply to TravisTheHuman :
Sort of using the 4% rule, but also aware that we are in better health now than in 20 years so getting some very wanted travel in.
Can't really take from "principle" since it's all one blob of money. Can take from selected funds, though. Hc is the better of the two retirement choices we have, since we both retired with full benefits. Funding comes from any source that can pay it (one of us can pay for the other's system- which stretches funds considerably).
We hope to retire in about six years. Give or take a couple I'm sure. Our method was live below our means and hide as much money from ourselves as possible via 401k.
For me the biggest regret is having not maxed out the Roth IRA over the years. So we are pushing our kids to do that after getting enough in a 401k to capture any available match.
We're definitely fortunate to have avoided major landmines. So far.
In reply to TravisTheHuman :
This is an interesting analysis, particularly if you're retiring "early" (40's or 50's). Also a lot of good tools linked within the article
In reply to calteg :
That was a good read. Thank you. As I wrote in my post above we could live on 2-2.5%, but that doesn't mean we will. I've got a bucket list to get through. ;^)
Is anyone aware of a quality retirement calculator? Not just one of the hundreds of basic retirement calculators online, or available through every online investment web-site. My former CFP had a decent model he would update yearly. It could factor part time consulting income, SSI, RMDs, was flexible for inputs, ran monte carlo analysis, etc. I'm not opposed to buying something if necessary.
Calteg - Interesting article on the 4% rule.
In reply to wake74 :
The aarp one is the best I've found. there could be better out there.
https://www.aarp.org/retirement/retirement-calculator/
I used this spreadsheet to help decide how much money we needed to retire:
It lets you take into account both positive and negative cash flows (eg mortgage, social security in the future, pensions, etc), and does more detailed simulations against more historical data than the "Trinity Study" (where the 4% number comes from).
Healthcare comes from the Early Retirement Healthcare Funding act (aka ACA). If you are living off your investments, your income on paper is very low, meaning you get large ACA subsidies. I adjusted my income (on paper) to be at the level where the subsidy basically paid for our health insurance premium. (The "income" in my case comes from converting taxable IRA to ROTH IRA, which counts as income on your tax return. I can convert as much or as little as I wish). Once we start withdrawing from regular IRAs (which counts as income also), the subsidy may change but it is still pretty large.
In reply to wake74 :
I've been pretty happy with the Boldin Retirement Calculator. Every review I have seen gives it a positive rating too.
Thanks for posting the article and the calculators. Something I definitely need to spend some time with, so far I just sorta had a number in my head, "If I have this, I should be ok" but it's much better to get that verified.
I gotta say, I'm jealous of you guys retiring before 50, or in your early 50's. I'm 54 and with any luck will retire in another 3-4 years. I want the mortgage gone before I retire, I'm almost there with that. Air Force pension/Tricare for Life kick when I turn 60, so that'll help...
In reply to TravisTheHuman :
We're using a number of different criteria. I will be 60 in about 6 weeks; DW is 61.
First, we live comfortably but fairly modestly. We are debt free. I keep track of expenditures, and we can live like we are now for around $65,000 (net) per year.
We can cover that using a 2.5% rule, not counting Social Security or DW's pension (which is not full; her company switched from a pension program to 401ks midway through her career).
Our financial advisor uses a Monte Carlo prediction program to model various scenarios. He gives us a 90% chance (or better) of having as much (or more) money as we do now at age 90. That's even assuming we start spending a bit more than we do now - which we want to do, since we have a backlog of postponed travel ideas for places we'd like to visit.
We are able to purchase health insurance through DW's previous employer until we each hit Medicare age (I am 18 months younger than she is). We've looked at the ACA marketplace but so far our gross income is too high to show us anything reasonable. Next year will will try there again (after I'm done). In the meantime, we have a high-deductible health plan and we are paying cash (well, HSA money) for dental and eye care.
We do not have long term care insurance yet, but at some point we will cancel our term life insurance and pick that up instead.
alphahotel said:Healthcare comes from the Early Retirement Healthcare Funding act (aka ACA). If you are living off your investments, your income on paper is very low, meaning you get large ACA subsidies. I adjusted my income (on paper) to be at the level where the subsidy basically paid for our health insurance premium. (The "income" in my case comes from converting taxable IRA to ROTH IRA, which counts as income on your tax return. I can convert as much or as little as I wish). Once we start withdrawing from regular IRAs (which counts as income also), the subsidy may change but it is still pretty large.
This used to be a savvy way of managing healthcare in early retirement. I strongly doubt it will be a viable option within the next few years though.
In terms of drawing money from a Roth IRA to keep your income low enough to get good ACA subsidies. As I understand it...
I don't believe the "backdoor" Roth IRA conversion option avoids the five year rule for penalties but am I missing something?
Just curious, what would your health care costs be in a typical retirement year?
In reply to Peabody :
We're going to continue my employer's plan for the next 18 months. It's a very high end plan and will cost about $29k for our family of four. After that we'll be buying the same insurance directly from the insurance company. It's a not for profit system with hospitals all over our area. We will probably go with higher deductibles at that point to save up front costs.
I'm probably a little too old now to call it "early" retirement (I'm 63), but I find myself in an unusual semi-retirement position...
My company has contracts with customers who need specialized skills. Without knowing I had developed them, apparently I have the needed skills. But the projects have been having various rather large delays- mostly related to permitting requirements and specialized financing approaches.
Its a long story, but basically they consider me hard to replace, and the contracts are pending. They will have a hard time replacing me when the log jam breaks.
So currently I have been receiving a full salary and benefits for staying at home not working waiting for the projects to move ahead. They company would rather pay me to keep me on board than have to find someone else later. I've been on paid leave for about half this entire year.
I don't need to work. I have enough to retire. But there is nothing wrong with money continuing to show up in my bank account to live on while my investments grow.
My retirement is entirely self-funded, and I've done pretty well. I'll stay on the payroll until they piss me off, then say "bye-bye".
Meanwhile, I'm flipping houses on the side. My company is paying me while I work on my own stuff.
Its like retirement, but isn't.
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