Hi,
(Warning: English is not my mother tongue so please be gentle with me.)
My wife and I met in graduate school. We started working in the same year. Twenty two years later, we started to think about RE. Our question is how many years of w**king should we continue until either one of us become RE, or both of us RE?
Family Situations: I am 54. My wife is 49. We have a 16 year old (high school junior), and a 13 year old (high school freshman). We live in S. California.
Financial Situation: We have total 1.5M saved (500K 401k + 700K in brokerage + 200K UGMA account for kids' education + 100K cash). Our house is about 450K value with 50K mortgage to go. Our two relatively new cars are paid off. We have no other debt. My wife and I earn about the same in IT field with combined salary of $250K last year. We only reached higher earning from just few years ago, and we appear to be at our highest earning stage at the moment, but our companies do annual layoffs at year end to trim down the lower 5% or so non-performers, so we never know if we will keep our jobs in the future. We have no pension. We plan to receive Social Security at age 62 with about $18K annually for each of us.
Average spending for the last 3 years: I roughly calculated that we spent about 90K annually for the last 3 years. This included the mortgage (25K monthly payments), kids' piano lessons, swimming lessons, summer camp, family vacations, etc.
Current Plan: Our current plan is to pay down the mortgage as quickly as we can by adding about $1000 extra each month. When it is all paid off, this would reduce our annual spending down to about 65K.
The unknown: health care is likely the biggest unknown. We both have company health care at the moment, but if we both RE, how do we access reasonable health plan? Children's fate in the future is also unknown whether they can get in state college as we plan, or they will need to pursue expensive private college? How about graduate schools after that? How about job market after schools? Do we have to continue to provide for them after that?
Question from us: when you calculate total asset, do you include your house value? If we do include house, but leave out education fund since that are really not ours but kids', we have about 1.75M. 4% of SWR will provide 70K annually. If we do not include house which will bring down to 1.3M, and the 4% SWR is about 50K so we will have to keep working for few more years.
Thanks
(Warning: English is not my mother tongue so please be gentle with me.)
My wife and I met in graduate school. We started working in the same year. Twenty two years later, we started to think about RE. Our question is how many years of w**king should we continue until either one of us become RE, or both of us RE?
Family Situations: I am 54. My wife is 49. We have a 16 year old (high school junior), and a 13 year old (high school freshman). We live in S. California.
Financial Situation: We have total 1.5M saved (500K 401k + 700K in brokerage + 200K UGMA account for kids' education + 100K cash). Our house is about 450K value with 50K mortgage to go. Our two relatively new cars are paid off. We have no other debt. My wife and I earn about the same in IT field with combined salary of $250K last year. We only reached higher earning from just few years ago, and we appear to be at our highest earning stage at the moment, but our companies do annual layoffs at year end to trim down the lower 5% or so non-performers, so we never know if we will keep our jobs in the future. We have no pension. We plan to receive Social Security at age 62 with about $18K annually for each of us.
Average spending for the last 3 years: I roughly calculated that we spent about 90K annually for the last 3 years. This included the mortgage (25K monthly payments), kids' piano lessons, swimming lessons, summer camp, family vacations, etc.
Current Plan: Our current plan is to pay down the mortgage as quickly as we can by adding about $1000 extra each month. When it is all paid off, this would reduce our annual spending down to about 65K.
The unknown: health care is likely the biggest unknown. We both have company health care at the moment, but if we both RE, how do we access reasonable health plan? Children's fate in the future is also unknown whether they can get in state college as we plan, or they will need to pursue expensive private college? How about graduate schools after that? How about job market after schools? Do we have to continue to provide for them after that?
Question from us: when you calculate total asset, do you include your house value? If we do include house, but leave out education fund since that are really not ours but kids', we have about 1.75M. 4% of SWR will provide 70K annually. If we do not include house which will bring down to 1.3M, and the 4% SWR is about 50K so we will have to keep working for few more years.
Thanks