Nothing fancy here....

[lampshade]

DH and I per month (projected date Jan 2020):

DH SS ------------> 1800
My SS ------------> 1200
DH Pension -------> 1000
My Pension -------> 500
My 403 (b) -------> 250

Savings --------> 300000
House sale -----> 350000 (Hopefully)


We would love to have more, but started late. Plan on moving to a LCOLA. Also plan on getting p/t "keep busy" jobs.

Will have Medicare and AARP supplemental (part of retirement benefit).

DH will be 64 and I'll be 62.

 

[Dog]

I'm sure you will hear this from others on the forum. You will have a nice monthly income, but success will depend on your anticipated expenses.

 

[Koolau]

I guess the 64 dollar question is "how does your projected monthly income square with your projected spending?" If projected spending is significantly below your projected $4750/mo income, you're probably in good shape. YMMV

 

[NW-Bound]

With a guaranteed income of $57K, paid-for house, and part-time income you look set.

One cannot fly first-class, eat caviar, and drink Dom Perignon all the time but only snobs will sneer at this kind of retirement.

 

[lampshade]

Thanks, all. We do not fly first class, eat caviar, or drink Dom Perignon. We do enjoy going out to eat and a movie. What we enjoy most is having people over.

We have ideas for travel, but not every year and not for months on end.

We are saving as much as we can; which is not much. But, something is better than nothing.

 

[NW-Bound]

I meant to say that I believe one can have a fine retirement with your income and assets, and not having to work part-time if you do not want to. It's always the superfluous stuff that ends up costing a lot of money. People spend money on extraneous stuff, hopefully because they can, not because they need to.

Looking at my Quicken screen, I believe I can cut my living expenses down to 60% of recent annual expenses, and people looking at us would not see anything missing. Why, I can get that 40% reduction simply by getting rid of one home and not being generous with charity and gifts to my children.

 

[rodi]

Welcome lampshade.

I found that getting a solid idea of my expenses (current) was the first step towards figuring out what I needed in retirement. Once I had detailed spending records I could make adjustments for expected changes in retirement. Keep in mind you have to pay taxes and health insurance in retirement.

Once I knew what I was spending on I was able to make little trims to the budget. I diverted these savings into my savings. By saving more I learned to live on less... This also improved my retirement protections. If I was living on less pre-retirement then I wasn't going to Ferrell the pain of living on less in retirement.

 

[chris2008]

57 k looks nice unless you are currently spending 100k/year.
And would one of you get survivors benefits in case...?

Tracking expenses very detailed for at least several months will help to find out where your money goes today and to project how this might change in retirement, in another place or another home.
We have also experienced that we were able to safe more just by tracking.

If you try to already adapt your lifestyle of today to your future retirement income you could use the 5 years from now to 2020 to increase savings.

 

[rayinpenn]

You sound apologetic don't be you guys are awesome!

People in their 60s have a median $172,000 saved. Roughly 40 percent have amassed $250,000 or more. You've saved $300k and you have pensions to boot!

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/05/retirement-readiness-by-age-how-do-you-stack-up.html?slide=6

Live simply, use a budget, work on your health and you'll do just fine. The challenge for most retirees is health care costs before 65 and a supplemental after...




Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum.

 

[MRG]

Congratulations you look to be in a great shape. Nice j*b.

 

[Chuckanut]

Also plan on getting p/t "keep busy" jobs.

If you have any extra time for work, I would be surprised. Once I retired I found that my 'extra' time was well used doing those things I could never do or do much of while I was working.

 

[NW-Bound]

...
And would one of you get survivors benefits in case...?
...

That is indeed something to think about. When a spouse dies, the expenses go down, but the income may go down more. That requires some adjustments.

When my father passed away, my mother for a while lamented about cash flow problems. When I talked with my brothers in trying to set up something so we could provide her with some financial help, one of my brothers who knew more about her financial conditions told me that there was nothing to worry about. She just asked him where to buy some CDs, and while she was not rich, she did not spend much and her assets, which included a rental home in addition to the one she lived in, should last a long time.

So, it was just the reduction of the usual monthly income that sent her panicking. That was 10 years ago, and she has been doing better. Recently, we observed her spending some money for little home improvements and repairs, something she was reluctant to do before.

 

[Sunset]

You seem fine enough, and I'm going to open a can of worms here, but....
Consider the scenario of DH delaying taking SS until 70 , it will mean you need to spend more from savings but the survivor benefit will be much larger if he dies, and if he lives a long time you both get more.

Also could mean you get get more heathcare subsidies in those early years as you would not have DH SS for the first few years.

 

[lampshade]

Sunset, no can of worms at all! Thanks for the food for thought.