john135r
Confused about dryer sheets
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2012
- Messages
- 4
Hello all. My goal is to retire as early as possible while being financially independent. A fairly typical goal around here. I do not want my kids to have to be financially responsible for me nor do I want to spend my “retirement” greeting shoppers to Wal-Mart or trying to up sell a large fri or apple pie to someone. And I definitely do not want to have to depend on the Government for anything and be subject to the budgetary whims of our Congress and Senate.
The specifics are to retire with a monthly income of $5000 after taxes. I was well on track for this until a few things happened…
First, in the late 90’s the senior executives of the company I work for used the employee pension fund (which was slightly overfunded at the time) to give themselves million dollar bonuses while the company was losing money hand over fist. The result is that we no longer have a pension. Add to that the fact that my company will also be taking 50% of my Social Security benefit by means of a “Social Security Offset” and I have next to no help from my employer in retirement.
Second, I got divorced in 2008. The ex-wife was “entitled” to half of my 401k. Since she never set up any type of pre-tax retirement account (and refused to do so after the divorce) I was forced to take a distribution from my 401k to give her what she was owed. Which cost me a lot in taxes, fees and penalties. In short, I lost two thirds of my 401k savings.
The up side to this is that through an aggressive 401k contribution and with some work on my fund selection I am getting back on track for a decent retirement date. At present I am looking at retiring when I’m 70 but I’m working on pulling that back to age 65 to 67. (I am currently 49)
My plan here is to go through this forum with a fine toothed comb and get as many ideas on retirement savings and retirement living that I can
The specifics are to retire with a monthly income of $5000 after taxes. I was well on track for this until a few things happened…
First, in the late 90’s the senior executives of the company I work for used the employee pension fund (which was slightly overfunded at the time) to give themselves million dollar bonuses while the company was losing money hand over fist. The result is that we no longer have a pension. Add to that the fact that my company will also be taking 50% of my Social Security benefit by means of a “Social Security Offset” and I have next to no help from my employer in retirement.
Second, I got divorced in 2008. The ex-wife was “entitled” to half of my 401k. Since she never set up any type of pre-tax retirement account (and refused to do so after the divorce) I was forced to take a distribution from my 401k to give her what she was owed. Which cost me a lot in taxes, fees and penalties. In short, I lost two thirds of my 401k savings.
The up side to this is that through an aggressive 401k contribution and with some work on my fund selection I am getting back on track for a decent retirement date. At present I am looking at retiring when I’m 70 but I’m working on pulling that back to age 65 to 67. (I am currently 49)
My plan here is to go through this forum with a fine toothed comb and get as many ideas on retirement savings and retirement living that I can