Hi, Another Newbie And Looking For RE Ideas...

[cb7010]

36 y.o. single male

Assets include:

$250K Real Estate Equity (split between house & vacation condo)
$450K Liquid Assets (stocks & cash)
$210K 401K

Getting awful tired of grinding my days away in front of an email inbox at my relatively good paying corporate sales job ($150K+- annually) and am starting to formulate an exit strategy. Would love to take some time completely off work to travel and golf and bike and ski and hike and to catch up and spend time with family and friends at my leisure and before starting a 2nd career or entrepreneurial pursuit. And; am having some difficulty coming up with a concrete plan...

Most recently, I have considered downsizing from my $425K house into something smaller in the $200K-$250K range and adding around $150K of my home equity to my investment portfolio..doesn't make sense to me to pay off a mortage when you can borrow money at 5.75% AND get a tax deduction..that is cheap money and you can make money on the spread with even highly rated bonds. This would bring my current investment portfolio to around $600K.

On one hand, and mostly after long frustrating work days, I figure I should go full bore into house downsizing, medical check-ups, etc..(RE preparation)..take the year or two off that I envision and recharge for my next career challenge..and, on the other, to suck it up and put in 2-4 more years in order to accumulate a little more money. I guess what it is starting to boil down to is determining how important the house is to me; and, the relative value of x more years working in my current occupation v. the freedom and desire to spend my days on something I am more passionate about. How much money is another year at this job really worth Am I off my rocker to think about quitting my job before I accumulate a few hundred thousand more dollars? Do I really want to move to a smaller house in a less desirable neighborhood?, etc. etc. etc....

Luckily, I found this forum and found others that are in similar situations or will be or have been..I am certainly enjoying the posts so far...and, would love to hear others thoughts and do look forward to contributing to the discussion here.

CB in CO

[Nords]

Welcome to the board, CB.

Sounds like you've already answered the "What will you DO all day?!?" question.

Maybe the next step is a variety of home-equity FIRECalc runs and reading Bob Clyatt's "Work Less, Live More". The answer might come more quickly from part-time work with longer time off...

[chinaco]

IMHO. It all depends on your expenses, how long you need to support yourself, you current asset, other available income streams, and finally how you manage your portfolio.

You might take a look at the Kaderli's site or the Terhorst's site. They have books about how they RE in theor 30's.

If the lifestyle fits, you might be able to model your 30's retirement after them.

RE is a personal choice. You can make it work if you really want to do so.

My advice (given from my perspective) -- Downsize the house. Wait a while to retire so you can accumulate more assets. Mainly because of the amount of time you will need to support yourself. If you are really sick of work, consider a different occupation.