My heart cries early retirement, my head is confused

Great advice... my employer does have the specifics about 401k withdraw at 55 posted on our company website. Here is where my head really begins to spin. When I do retire, do I roll it over to an IRA, or keep some of it with the Principal Group which manages my employer's 401K. I understand the tax ramifications. I don't hold on to my company stock when I receive it, so there is no special tax treatment there in capital gains treatment. I do have a financial adviser through the Principal Group, but with being in a 401K, investments choices are limited to the plan. However, at retirement, I will be very confused and dizzy to go from there with this portfolio that grew... to my surprise and dumb luck.

The following is my understanding, but I did not do this, so I could be wrong (and someone please correct me so I know).
If you retire at less than 59.5, you will have to keep a large portion of your 401K in the 401K, possibly all of it, because if you roll it over to an IRA, then you will pay penalties for early withdrawal from the IRA.
You are allowed early withdrawal from some 401K's without the penalty.
Some 401K's only allow a single roll-over.
 
The following is my understanding, but I did not do this, so I could be wrong (and someone please correct me so I know).
If you retire at less than 59.5, you will have to keep a large portion of your 401K in the 401K, possibly all of it, because if you roll it over to an IRA, then you will pay penalties for early withdrawal from the IRA.
You are allowed early withdrawal from some 401K's without the penalty.
Some 401K's only allow a single roll-over.

Good conversation Sunset. I know the important point is that we have to know what we are doing with our 401K portfolio when we retire to prevent income tax trigger and the early withdrawal penalty. I do know in my plan, 59.5 is the age that you can withdraw without the 10% penalty. I think in my plan, you can start to withdraw at 55 without the 10% penalty if I retire, but I think there is more to it with that option...maybe a required percentage withdrawal rate each year for a certain period of time and duration?
 
Thanks for the guidance! I think reducing expenses is a major key as well. The area that I want to learn more is how to generate income from my portfolio once my work income stops... since the shift seems to change from investment growth to investment income stream need. It seems wise to invest in multiple ways to receive income stream at retirement including rental property. Drawing 4% from the principle sounds safe and common, but I'm sure people are doing a lot more to develop retirement income streams. I'm very interested to hear what others seem to be doing.

If you have not read it yet there is a good book called Your Money or Your Life. It doesn't have any good, specific investment advice, but the concept is to keep reducing recurring expenses and increasing passive income until you reach the crossover point. At my husband's and my ages, with a financial plan for covering 50 more years, every $1K a year we shave off our annual expenses means needing $50K less in total retirement funding, so with our expenses that was easier to do than working full time longer.

We have a long list of things we can do to increase our passive / semi-passive income and decrease our expenses. Every week we just knock a few more off the list. I have a spreadsheet with hundreds of items and calculate the 10 year ROI for each one and we are working our way down the list, knocking off the highest ROI items, week by week. Last month I cancelled Hulu Plus and used my Bing rewards for Amazon gift certificates instead, got our energy bill lower than the same month the year before, eliminated some business checking and savings fees, moved some money out of cash to CD ladders, optimized the domain and hosting costs for our businesses and a few more things. The October total came to over $1k year in improved ER / semi-ER cash flow, either by cutting costs or increasing income. Over 50 years there's another $50K potential improvement in retirement funding.

If you've always been on top of your investments and expenses this won't help, but we sure weren't. We've still got a lot of improvements to make. For retirement income streams we have a couple of hobby businesses, pensions, SS and our investment portfolio income, which is invested in relatively conservative investments. And long term our house has appreciated more than inflation.
 
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If you have not read it yet there is a good book called Your Money or Your Life. It doesn't have any good, specific investment advice, but the concept is to keep reducing recurring expenses and increasing passive income until you reach the crossover point. At my husband's and my ages, with a financial plan for covering 50 more years, every $1K a year we shave off our annual expenses means needing $50K less in total retirement funding, so with our expenses that was easier to do than working full time longer.

We have a long list of things we can do to increase our passive / semi-passive income and decrease our expenses. Every week we just knock a few more off the list. I have a spreadsheet with hundreds of items and calculate the 10 year ROI for each one and we are working our way down the list, knocking off the highest ROI items, week by week. Last month I cancelled Hulu Plus and used my Bing rewards for Amazon gift certificates instead, got our energy bill lower than the same month the year before, eliminated some business checking and savings fees, moved some money out of cash to CD ladders, optimized the domain and hosting costs for our businesses and a few more things. The October total came to over $1k year in improved ER / semi-ER cash flow, either by cutting costs or increasing income. Over 50 years there's another $50K potential improvement in retirement funding.

If you've always been on top of your investments and expenses this won't help, but we sure weren't. We've still got a lot of improvements to make. For retirement income streams we have a couple of hobby businesses, pensions, SS and our investment portfolio income, which is invested in relatively conservative investments. And long term our house has appreciated more than inflation.

Great advice... much appreciated!! I just ordered "Money or Your Life" on Amazon. I'm buying a lot of the books on the recommended list on this forum site as well at Amazon - used book prices. You see, I'm learning to cut expenses....lol! - thanks again and well received advice... love this forum site! :)
 
Great advice... much appreciated!! I just ordered "Money or Your Life" on Amazon. I'm buying a lot of the books on the recommended list on this forum site as well at Amazon - used book prices. You see, I'm learning to cut expenses....lol! - thanks again and well received advice... love this forum site! :)

If you really wanted to cut expenses, you could borrow the books for free from your local library, and if they don't have the book they can do an inter-library loan of the book from another library.
After all your taxes are paying for the library, so make use of it :)
 
I like having books I can mark up and dog ear so I go to thrift shops and used library books sales:
Book Sale Finder

I think sooner or later almost every book I paid $20 for on Amazon has showed up at the library sales, plus a lot of cool old books with forgotten knowledge.

Instead of buying trendy urban homesteading books on Amazon for $20 each, I buy old home economics and gardening books for a quarter with the same information, like how to make soup stock from scratch, grow sprouts in a mason jar or set up a windowsill herb garden. Green, more sustainable living has become a hobby for us these days, as well a big money saver.
 
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Thanks for the guidance! I think reducing expenses is a major key as well. The area that I want to learn more is how to generate income from my portfolio once my work income stops... since the shift seems to change from investment growth to investment income stream need. It seems wise to invest in multiple ways to receive income stream at retirement including rental property. Drawing 4% from the principle sounds safe and common, but I'm sure people are doing a lot more to develop retirement income streams. I'm very interested to hear what others seem to be doing.

Passive Income Ideas:
- Vanugard Managed Payout Funds

- Single Premium Immediate Annuities (SPIA's) - after interest rates rise some

- Rental Real Estate (with or w/o outsourced Property Management)

- Pensions

- Social Security

- RMDs from retirement accounts after age 70 1/2

- Dividend paying stocks and mutual funds

- Peer to Peer (P2P) lending (ie LendingClub Prosper etc)

- SWR withdrawals from total return investments

-gauss
 
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Passive Income Ideas:
- Vanugard Managed Payout Funds

- Single Premium Immediate Annuities (SPIA's) - after interest rates rise some

- Rental Real Estate (with or w/o outsourced Property Management)

- Pensions

- Social Security

- RMDs from retirement accounts after age 70 1/2

- Dividend paying stocks and mutual funds

- Peer to Peer (P2P) lending (ie LendingClub Prosper etc)

- SWR withdrawals from total return investments

-gauss

I would suggest if you have a lot of $$ in retirement accounts that will be forced to take RMD's and not a lot of other income, that one consider taking out some from the retirement account prior to SS time.
This will lower the RMD amount and possibly mean paying less tax on SS.
One can of course calculate out all the numbers to see if it works for them before doing it.
 
I would suggest if you have a lot of $$ in retirement accounts that will be forced to take RMD's and not a lot of other income, that one consider taking out some from the retirement account prior to SS time.
This will lower the RMD amount and possibly mean paying less tax on SS.
One can of course calculate out all the numbers to see if it works for them before doing it.

The Fidelity RIP has year by year cash flow detail in a spreadsheet with a column for income taxes year by year, so you can change all sorts of parameters, like taking SS later and drawing down the retirement accounts earlier, and compare the results among different SS and retirement account withdrawal strategies.
 
As others have said, you need to get a good handle on all your numbers - SS, expenses, medical costs, etc. and run them through RIP and other calculators.

Most people here are saving for retirement. We realized a few years ago we had a decent income to retire on already if we could just cut our expenses, so we've been focusing on that more. Our energy bills this month a few years ago used to be $300+ and our last bill was under $70. We've been doing the same with cable, the land line phone, insurance, taxes - everything really, and it adds up to needing less than half as much overall as we thought we'd need to retire. Most of the cuts are things we don't miss - like extra cable channels no one watched, bank fees, energy hog light bulbs and appliances, the land line phone, cell phone contracts, higher income taxes, cars with poor MPG and repair records, etc. If you have always optimized your expenses you may not have a lot to cut, but in hindsight we sure weren't on top of our expenses enough.

Plus we still work part-time from home, so that helps. But we cut our expenses enough to be FI without the extra income. What we initially thought were small pensions actually cover a decent part of our retirement expenses these days, now that our expenses are lower.

: love your post and thoughts...did you cut after semi-retirement, or along the way? How is the part time job deal,working for you? --Nomad
 
If you have not read it yet there is a good book called Your Money or Your Life. It doesn't have any good, specific investment advice, but the concept is to keep reducing recurring expenses and increasing passive income until you reach the crossover point. At my husband's and my ages, with a financial plan for covering 50 more years, every $1K a year we shave off our annual expenses means needing $50K less in total retirement funding, so with our expenses that was easier to do than working full time longer.
Great advice... much appreciated!! I just ordered "Money or Your Life" on Amazon. I'm buying a lot of the books on the recommended list on this forum site as well at Amazon - used book prices. You see, I'm learning to cut expenses....lol! - thanks again and well received advice... love this forum site! :)
Great, great book. But read the first 8 chapters and stop. His advice on where to invest (long term US treasury bonds and the like) to generate income was questionable when he wrote it, and practically unworkable for the foreseeable future unless you're prepared to amass a nest egg about 3 times the size he wrote about.
 
Just as an fyi, the content of the book - "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin appears to have been converted into a "nine step program" and can be found at the following link. http://www.financialintegrity.org

The website at this location appears to contain all of the information in the original book, and, in addition, a collection of "downloadable guides", worksheets, tools and utilities.
 
If you really wanted to cut expenses, you could borrow the books for free from your local library, and if they don't have the book they can do an inter-library loan of the book from another library.
After all your taxes are paying for the library, so make use of it :)

Hahaha... what happens if a drive all the way to the library (burning fuel and putting wear and tear on my car) and find out the great books that you guys recommend are not there? I already bought 7 books recommended thought this forum site and all were used books with the exception of one that was new ($1.00 more when considering shipping), Lot of these great used books sell through Amazon between $0.01 to $6.00 with shipping costs of $3.99...just click the used link on the book you want to purchase. :)
 
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Passive Income Ideas:
- Vanugard Managed Payout Funds

- Single Premium Immediate Annuities (SPIA's) - after interest rates rise some

- Rental Real Estate (with or w/o outsourced Property Management)

- Pensions

- Social Security

- RMDs from retirement accounts after age 70 1/2

- Dividend paying stocks and mutual funds

- Peer to Peer (P2P) lending (ie LendingClub Prosper etc)

- SWR withdrawals from total return investments

-gauss

Thanks... I know I hit the jackpot finding this forum site a few days ago!
 
Just as an fyi, the content of the book - "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin appears to have been converted into a "nine step program" and can be found at the following link. http://www.financialintegrity.org

The website at this location appears to contain all of the information in the original book, and, in addition, a collection of "downloadable guides", worksheets, tools and utilities.

I just bought it new at Amazon for $9.00 which includes shipping but thanks for the link. My wife has a Kindle, but I prefer actual books because I work on the computer all day long. I try to read these financial and/or retirement books in bed just before I go to sleep. Lol... they seems to help me fall asleep.
 
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... I try to read these financial and/or retirement books in bed just before I go to sleep. Lol... they seems to help me fall asleep.

And hopefully they lead into pleasant dreams as you sleep....
 
Hahaha... what happens if a drive all the way to the library (burning fuel and putting wear and tear on my car) and find out the great books that you guys recommend are not there? I already bought 7 books recommended thought this forum site and all were used books with the exception of one that was new ($1.00 more when considering shipping), Lot of these great used books sell through Amazon between $0.01 to $6.00 with shipping costs of $3.99...just click the used link on the book you want to purchase. :)

Over here, we have the internet, so I log into the library, reserve my books, a dvd (up to 7) and some cd's (up to 10). Then I drive to the library and pick everything up.
If you keep buying books, it will just be more to move to Kauai :)
 
Over here, we have the internet, so I log into the library, reserve my books, a dvd (up to 7) and some cd's (up to 10). Then I drive to the library and pick everything up.
If you keep buying books, it will just be more to move to Kauai :)

In my state, we have a system where we can request books from other communities libraries and have them shipped to our local library. The catalogs are all online and searchable through a single interface.

There is also a worldwide catalog of library catalogs available at worldcat.org

-gauss
 
: love your post and thoughts...did you cut after semi-retirement, or along the way? How is the part time job deal,working for you? --Nomad

We cut expenses so my husband didn't have to have a megacorp job any more. We had a couple of hobby businesses before that but that income is not consistent so we had to plan a budget that would cover our living expenses just based on pensions, SS and portfolio income.

We've been cost cutting for several years and I am still stumped at some of the easy things I missed along the way, like eliminating the business banking fees. We just did that last week and there was an extra $300 a year that took an hour to change over. So the ten year ROI on our time was $3k for one hour of work. Earlier this year we stopped renting our cable modem for $8 a month, or $960 over ten years for another hour or two of work.
 
Kauai bound, welcome to the forum and seems you have a lot of good reading to do and learn more to help you with decisions.

Not knowing what your savings will be 5 years from now, I can only say that it seems your current levels may be a bit tight with two houses and traveling between. Since you have only small pension, will need to cover medical until 65, and wait until SS kicks in; you have a lot of potential expenses and not enough savings to provide the income with a safe withdrawal rate. Kind of a champagne taste with beer budget problem. However, you can control and determine your expenses which is the key. Expenses can be changed to lower them, and in turn it gives more flexibility for the required withdrawals to meet your budget requirements.

Maximizing savings between now working full time and 5 years from now retirement may be key to your ability to retire and have the std of living you want.
 
Kauai bound, welcome to the forum and seems you have a lot of good reading to do and learn more to help you with decisions.

Not knowing what your savings will be 5 years from now, I can only say that it seems your current levels may be a bit tight with two houses and traveling between. Since you have only small pension, will need to cover medical until 65, and wait until SS kicks in; you have a lot of potential expenses and not enough savings to provide the income with a safe withdrawal rate. Kind of a champagne taste with beer budget problem. However, you can control and determine your expenses which is the key. Expenses can be changed to lower them, and in turn it gives more flexibility for the required withdrawals to meet your budget requirements.

Maximizing savings between now working full time and 5 years from now retirement may be key to your ability to retire and have the std of living you want.

Thanks for the warm welcome and solid advice and guidance 38Chevy. I sure wish life was simpler like the previous generation where people retired with a pension. This 401k alternative makes retirement much more complicated, and maybe even dependent on the market for the next decade.
 
This 401k alternative makes retirement much more complicated, and maybe even dependent on the market for the next decade.

You don't necessarily have to depend on the market for retirement income. I don't. But it means not counting on stock market type returns in your retirement funding plan. I focus in part on cutting expenses because I can control most of my expenses, but I can't control the market.
 
You don't necessarily have to depend on the market for retirement income. I don't. But it means not counting on stock market type returns in your retirement funding plan. I focus in part on cutting expenses because I can control most of my expenses, but I can't control the market.

It's tough to even plan for retirement with my company 401K plan being my primary means to retire. For instance, when Obama was first elected, the stock market crashed, and my 401K was something like $300,000 or so (don't remember). Today, that same portfolio with your typical 6% contribution and company match is at about $920,000. So, in 5 to 10 years, I have no idea what the value of the 401K will look like.
 
It's tough to even plan for retirement with my company 401K plan being my primary means to retire. For instance, when Obama was first elected, the stock market crashed, and my 401K was something like $300,000 or so (don't remember). Today, that same portfolio with your typical 6% contribution and company match is at about $920,000. So, in 5 to 10 years, I have no idea what the value of the 401K will look like.

Most posters here are into a Boglehead type approach, using index funds. Anther strategy is a matching one:

Matching strategy - Bogleheads

There is a poster named bobcat2 on bogleheads with some good posts on matching strategies. Matching strategies have their pros and cons, but avoid sequence of return risk early on in retirement.:

How to avoid sequence-of-return risk - MarketWatch
 
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Thanks for the guidance! I think reducing expenses is a major key as well. The area that I want to learn more is how to generate income from my portfolio once my work income stops... since the shift seems to change from investment growth to investment income stream need. It seems wise to invest in multiple ways to receive income stream at retirement including rental property. Drawing 4% from the principle sounds safe and common, but I'm sure people are doing a lot more to develop retirement income streams. I'm very interested to hear what others seem to be doing.


The 4% strategy includes COLAs every year, based on inflation. You start with 4%, then increase the withdrawal amount each year. It's common, but not necessarily safe. Originally, it had a 95% success rate factored in, so it was never 100%. Things have changed since that strategy was worked out decades ago: people are living longer, and if you retire early it screws up the formula. I retired at 58, and my WD is 2%, and I don't give myself an automatic COLA. We also have pensions. I would never go above above a 3% WD of the initial portfolio value.

One thing about insurance is Obamacare - if you can keep your income under $70k, you proabaly qualify for subsidies that might lower your health insurance costs.

Also, check your 401k on that rollover and also check your current costs on your 401k. I rolled over $375k from one account to Vanguard with no penalty. I was 57. I can make one rollover a quarter. My average ER is .08%. If you're paying 1 to 2 % with your current 401k, the rollovers a good idea. You are NOT taking money out of an IRA when you do a rollover - you are merely changing custodians. I see no reason there should be a tax penalty. There was none for mine. But check - yours may differ.


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