Do you have a net worth goal and did you achieve it before ER ?

[ShortInSeattle]

Most people are goal setter. Did you have a net worth goal in mind ? Did you achieve that before you decided to take ER? Is retirement a stage for drawing down and you want to spend most of your time enjoying life, and be happy to have a stable nest egg and just let it rides , or you still working on growing your net worth as you are going forth? And if you are the grower group, what percentage of net worth increase do you hope for in 10 to 12 years?

Yes, I have a net worth goal in mind. Paid off house, Investments * .035 = Expenses.

Not there yet.....

Upon retirement, I'll be happy if we maintain our nest egg in line with inflation.

I don't specific growth goals, because I don't see the point. I figure all I can do is maximize contributions and follow a good strategy, the market will do what it will do.

Interesting thread!

SIS

 

[cinman2000]

Until last year I was following the Financial Advisor's advice and shooting for a specific goal. Then we met the next year and he increased it. After that I decided to set my own goal. It's not a number, but in a spreadsheet calculating FI. By the way my investments are doing better than the ones he is managing

 

[scrinch]

Did you have a net worth goal in mind?

Yes.

Did you achieve that before you decided to take ER?

Yes. But DW wasn't ready for us to ER when we reached the goal, so we have kept w*rking. Late last year we reached 2x the goal, and it looks like we will be around 2.5x the goal when we ER in 2015 or 2016.

I don't particularly care whether our networth grows or shrinks in retirement. I just want it to be >0 when we both have reached the end of the line. Our parents/grandparents died at 71-97 years old, so it's a pretty wide retirement window we're potentially looking at!

 

[Ronstar]

I had a net worth goal, then we reached it, and then I raised it, and then the market tanked, and now we're close again. I'm pulling the plug in 58 days, DW who knows.

 

[gerntz]

It seems to me that many people here worked or plan to work far longer than they have to. They plan to live off their portfolio instead of spend down their portfolio. Their children will be very well taken care of.

This was pretty much us. Being secure & not needing to worry, even wonder, about income & spending was our mindset. Job was interesting & a good corporate culture, so wasn't fighting to get out. But at a point the balance between needing to do something for someone else vs. doing what we wanted tilted in favor of the latter. Net, taking 3% out + SS still lets us do was we want & NW grow on average. Life is good.

 

[ziggy29]

I had a net worth goal, then we reached it, and then I raised it, and then the market tanked, and now we're close again. I'm pulling the plug in 58 days, DW who knows.

We hit a rather major milestone last month. We're currently about 3% over that milestone, at least with respect to the assets we include. But we are sufficiently due for a market correction that I'm not expecting to stay above it all the time -- at least not for a while...

 

[Texas Proud]

Sounds like my dad. Yeah, he goes on regular junkets to New Orleans and Vegas, but he still goes fishing in the boat that is as old as I am and since hanging up his spurs has not drawn on his portfolio for a dime (its all be a cash hoard and SS). The guy has a heart condition and is 73, you cannot take it with you. But he seems happy enough, so it is what it is.

That is the most important thing IMO...

My 93YO mom has a LOT of money when compared to her spending... (not a lot by some standards here, but by her standards)... and we can not get her to spend it... but she is happy..

One of the things she does spend it on now is a yearly cruise with 'the girls'... a total of 6 women on a week cruise... this is the third or forth year where she pays for the cruise, but the girls have to pay for everything else.... they love it, and so does my mom.... that is where DW is right now...

 

[jkern]

Yes I had a Net Worth Goal. Very conservative and no dependency on Social Security.

No I did not reach it due to housing and stock market crash.

My portfolio has increased $350K since retiring in August 2009. No problems here!

 

[Jay_Gatsby]

Yes I had a Net Worth Goal. Very conservative and no dependency on Social Security.

No I did not reach it due to housing and stock market crash.

My portfolio has increased $350K since retiring in August 2009. No problems here!

Well, at least you had the benefit of the last 3+ years of stock market gains since the low in 2009.

 

[Retire2013]

Yes, I have a NW goal (excluding home equity) before ER. I can ER now and have 4 SWR but I want to work until I can have a 3% SWR before ER.

Yes, I would like to see my NW increasing a little bit in ER but that won't be a major goal. It would be a bit scary to see my portfolio vanishing as I age but if FIRECALC gives me a 100% success rate then I think I should just relax and enjoy ER when I finally get to do so. Like other Forum members, I have worked long and hard and saved judiciously and LBYM all these years so I plan to enjoy ER and not making growing my portfolio a priority.

I live frugally anyway so at 3% SWR I still will not feel deprived. I read a lot. Walk my dogs. Volunteer with homeless animals. And do a lot of yoga. None of these things requires much money. What I will treasure in ER is all that free time. Can't wait for 2014.

Very interesting thread, thanks to OP!

 

[truenorth418]

My first big goal was to save $1 million in investable assets, after paying off my home of course. After achieving that goal, I began to look at what it would take to retire early, so that became my next big financial goal.

 

[Ready-4-ER-at-14]

Life went through phases:

Accumulation of family and family stuff with minor investing

Accumulation of stuff for capital gain.

First tracking then setting goals for capital amount.

Setting and tracking goal for cash flow which sometimes conflicted with capital gain goal.

Setting of passive income goal.

setting passive income goal at 2x of original. All but this last one has been achieved. ETA 3-4 years if things continue well.

 

[EllisWyatt]

Like many posters, I had a net worth goal in mind when I first started thinking about ER.And like many, it evolved.

A LONG time ago, when I was in my twenties, I set a goal based on a 10% withdrawl rate. In retrospect, a bit simplistic, but that predated the Trinity Study, the math was easy, and the goal wasn't as daunting as it would have been at a 3-4% withdrawl rate which provided good motivation.
When I reached that goal, and started getting serious about the possibility of ER, realized that goal was too little, so set a higher goal.
When I hit that higher goal, realized I would prefer a higher standard of living than it would allow, so am currently working on - andrapidly approaching - my third goal.
Somewhere between the first and second goal was my FI moment (actually thought of as a "U" instead of an "I"...

Using the bucket analog from my overseas assignment, you get issued two buckets when you start - one you try to fill with money, one they try fill with Bull. When one of the buckets gets full, you leave. What they don't tell you is that the money bucket has an elastic bottom.

 

[ikubak]

Have had numerous financial goals, hit them and then raised the bar. Hitting 95% on the firecalc was a goal, and then I raised it to 100%. Now I'm just adding on to my NW w no particular goal. Goals aren't really monetary at this point. My goal right now is less stress until I hit the bonus round (vesting in pension)....949 days to go.

 

[boatfishandnature]

Yes and yes. We were blessed in that we exceed our goal by quite a bit and are getting ready to pull the plug (will be giving my notice in a couple of weeks ) after 33 years with megacorp. It is amazing, though, what a high % of the few people who know that we are planning to retire still try to convince me that I should keep working...

 

[bondi688]

Yes and yes. We were blessed in that we exceed our goal by quite a bit and are getting ready to pull the plug (will be giving my notice in a couple of weeks ) after 33 years with megacorp. It is amazing, though, what a high % of the few people who know that we are planning to retire still try to convince me that I should keep working...

Michael Corleone: Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.

 

[mountaintosea]

Yes and yes.

 

[bbbamI]

We really didn't have a net worth (funds) amount in mind. Our first priority was to add additional money each month to our mortgage. We wanted that debt gone. The next step was for DH to be able to have enough years with Megacorp to collect a pension and receive medical benefits.

(of course during this time we were saving as much as we could)

Once those goals were met, we were fortunate to have a large enough portfolio that would provide a nice lifestyle with a low WR.

Early retirement...absolutely no regrets. Enjoy it while we can.

 

[Katsmeow]

Specific Goal - Truthfully - we didn't really have a specific net worth goal in mind.

DH and I got married relatively late (I was late 30s, he was mid-40s) and came from a different place.

He worked for a megacorp and knew he would eventually have a pension and SS and figured he would work until 65 and then retire. His company matched 6% of salary for his 401(k) and he contributed the 6% and got the match. So - we got married and he just kept on doing what he was doing. He truthfully didn't even think about how to invest the 401(k). His company contribution was all in company stock and his contributions went to company stock as well (note that we got married in the 90s well before the Enron debacle so there wasn't as much about the risks of having company stock in the 401k).

I came from a different employment culture where there was no pension, nothing except a 401k and the employer made a contribution whether I contributed at all. In the early years I didn't contribute anything and basically just ignored the fact that my employer was making contributions.

So...after DH and I married we just kind of carried on. I eventually started contributing to my 401k and sorta kinda new he would get a pension some day but didn't really focus on it much.

Eventually I asked him about the pension and he researched it and found out that it was about double what he had thought it would be or that he could get a lump sum which turned out to be quite a lot money.

At that point we looked at how much we had in our 401(k)s, looked at the pension lump sum and the fact he had retiree medical and then considered what we would need to do to make it work sooner rather than later. That is, we decided to adjust our lifestyle to what we had (or could have within a couple of years) rather than trying to hit a specific number.

Whether will keep growing or will spend nest egg - We are fairly agnostic on this. That is, we will really don't care if we leave any money to our kids. It would be nice to do so, but not to the point that we would compromise our lifestyle to do so. If there is money left when we go then they will get the benefit. If there isn't, then I will feel no guilt.

That said, it would of course be nice to always have some money in reserve so I would prefer to not deplete the entire nest egg. However, decreasing it to some extent doesn't bother me. DH retired 2 1/2 years ago and we have somewhat depleted the nest egg. We knew we would have some high expenses in the first few years after his retirement. We still had kids in high school/college and had to sell a house and property that we knew we would sell at a loss. We went into DH's retirement knowing this and we did factor it into our plans. Our expenses are now on a downward slope although they will be higher the next 2 years or so and then will go down markedly in about 3 years. I've run FireCalc over and over again so I'm OK with that. If we ever started having the nest egg deplete faster than we've anticipated then I know what expenses we could cut.

 

[Trawler]

Yes we had a portfolio goal excluding home and I pulled the plug the day we hit that goal. Hope the portfolio grows and Fire Calc says histically it should 97.8% of the time with out SS income. We have also set a floor on the downside and if the portfolio goes below that number before SS income kicks in we will find other income.

 

[LakeTravis]

I have a specific net worth goal, and it's based on a 100% drawdown over 30 years with equal portions of estimated expenses and play money. No reason for me to leave a large chunck of money laying around when I'm gone, and running firecalc shows most if not all scenarios ending with more than I started with, so the only challenge I'm left with at this point is garnering enough confidence to believe all of the projections.

 

[pjm-7]

Net worth goal

Yes, I set a net worth goal almost 30 years ago. I'm at the number now. I am working on ideas/plans for the next phase of my life. I have not given notice at the office, but if a new round of layoffs happen it won't hurt to go. The FIRE date was always planned for this year.

 

[SumDay]

Yes, we have a goal, and hope to be there in ~5 years, which coincides with DH turning 65, so I can get him on Medicare and off my employer provided health care coverage.

I've been tempted to post a poll here and asking people to post what their goal is (or maybe their current assets?), and post it in the form a poll, with ranges, so it's anonymous.

Like
<500,000
500,000 - 1,000,000
1,000,001 to 1,250,000
etc.

Has that been done on this board? Is that acceptable? Would y'all participate? Didn't want to violate any rules....

 

[obgyn65]

I would be ok to participate as long as it is anonymous. I think there was a good NW survey done on Bogleheads a few months ago with quite a few data points. I have an idea of what my NW is but not exactly sure if I have been calculating it the right way anyway.

Yes, we have a goal, and hope to be there in ~5 years, which coincides with DH turning 65, so I can get him on Medicare and off my employer provided health care coverage.

I've been tempted to post a poll here and asking people to post what their goal is (or maybe their current assets?), and post it in the form a poll, with ranges, so it's anonymous.

Like
<500,000
500,000 - 1,000,000
1,000,001 to 1,250,000
etc.

Has that been done on this board? Is that acceptable? Would y'all participate? Didn't want to violate any rules....

 

[photoguy]

Well 1M is probably a goal that many have. When we were at 800k, I thought wouldn't it be great if the portfolio could hit 1.2M. When we hit 1.2, we thought wouldn't it be great if it could hit 1.5.

I would guess the nature of human psychology is such that most folks would feel comfortable if they just had 1.5 - 2x more than what they've got now.