I'm 4.5 months (86 working days, but who is counting??) away from FIRE. My wife will work for 3-4 years beyond me. We just met with our "for fee" FA for the second time a week ago. I am getting a 3/4 year salary severance in 2017 as my job is being assimilated (Ok, if I *HAVE* to retire....).
My plan when I retired was to "strip" my wife's paycheck of all savings (currently near 35%) except HSA and try to live on her salary and leave the portfolio alone. With our budget estimates, it looked doable to within $500-$1k a month. I would invest the severance.
And BTW, there are 3 more "phases" in our fin. plan beyond me retired her not, they are
we're both retired, paying out of pocket for healthcare
medicare kicks in
SS kicks in
The FA advice, and it kind of makes sens to me now, was to leave her paycheck as is (taking megacorp's 401K matching, plus some other other heavy 401k contributions) and supplement it with my severance (should last about 2 years) After that, burn the cash account to make ends meet, then only after that start leaning on the 401Ks, over drawing mine to zero eventually, then finally going into hers but keeping it pretty healthy (pulling only gains).
I also have a pension that I will take as a lump sum that he has left untouched to grow in an IRA until SS then it just becomes another income source.
There's a bit more to it than that, but those are the pertinent details. I think the idea is let the 401Ks age and ripen as long as you can by flying on cash and severance then go into the 401ks.
SS for us is significant, we both have 30+ years of megacorp salaries and fact is we could probably live off of SS pretty comfortably if we had to. So the stretch phase is that one where we are both retired, paying HC out of pocket and young enough to still spend like rockstars.
Interestingly I'll add, that the FA spreadsheet shows the net investable asset total pretty much flat in value from the time I retire until SS, a span of 15 years. Happy about that......
Thoughts??
My plan when I retired was to "strip" my wife's paycheck of all savings (currently near 35%) except HSA and try to live on her salary and leave the portfolio alone. With our budget estimates, it looked doable to within $500-$1k a month. I would invest the severance.
And BTW, there are 3 more "phases" in our fin. plan beyond me retired her not, they are
we're both retired, paying out of pocket for healthcare
medicare kicks in
SS kicks in
The FA advice, and it kind of makes sens to me now, was to leave her paycheck as is (taking megacorp's 401K matching, plus some other other heavy 401k contributions) and supplement it with my severance (should last about 2 years) After that, burn the cash account to make ends meet, then only after that start leaning on the 401Ks, over drawing mine to zero eventually, then finally going into hers but keeping it pretty healthy (pulling only gains).
I also have a pension that I will take as a lump sum that he has left untouched to grow in an IRA until SS then it just becomes another income source.
There's a bit more to it than that, but those are the pertinent details. I think the idea is let the 401Ks age and ripen as long as you can by flying on cash and severance then go into the 401ks.
SS for us is significant, we both have 30+ years of megacorp salaries and fact is we could probably live off of SS pretty comfortably if we had to. So the stretch phase is that one where we are both retired, paying HC out of pocket and young enough to still spend like rockstars.
Interestingly I'll add, that the FA spreadsheet shows the net investable asset total pretty much flat in value from the time I retire until SS, a span of 15 years. Happy about that......
Thoughts??
