Katsmeow
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2009
- Messages
- 5,308
It has been 3 years since I semi-retired ...and that period may be ending soon to become ER.
It has been in a lot of ways a wild 3 years. Three years ago I embarked on semi-retirement and then DH fully retired in June, 2010. Since that time I've worked 1 or 2 days a week.
The past 3 years have been a bit of a wild journey. When we started out we planned to sell our very large, expensive to maintain house with a plan to downsize, having already bought the house we planned to remodel and move into.
Well -- best laid plans and all that. Our house took a long time to sell (at a loss even). Then, the house we were planning to remodel needed so much more work than we anticipated - to the point that we decided to demolish and build new. And, after further looking at that we realized it would be much cheaper to buy an existing house. Finally a year ago we got settled into the house that we bought and then later in the year sold the other property (the one we had been going to build on). The whole thing was an overall negative financially. Still - we have been in our current house for over a year now and we really like it (and the sellers sold it for us for less than they paid for it so at least that worked out for us).
The bright spot in all that was that my part-time work arrangement worked out well. When I started I was going to work 1 day a week. Over time, that gradually crept up to 2 days a week. I think that I would have been much more berserk about the real estate stuff except for the fact that the financial losses from that were covered by my part-time work. My work was very well paid and basically has worked out to about $225k over the 3 year period, which ended up making a huge difference.
I always said I would work as long as I enjoyed it. The things that were great about the work was that it was the fun part of my work and I could do some of it from home.
At the beginning of this year I had no set plan to fully retire at any particular time. I was actually thinking of continuing to work for another couple of years. My thought was that it wasn't too onerous, continuing to work would lessen our withdrawals from the portfolio for the next few years, and my working was a little bit of a hedge against any market downturn that might occur in the next few years.
I've been told a number of times over the last 3 years that I could come back full-time and I've been offered the opportunity to work more hours. So, it has been ...comforting...to know that if there was a large market downturn or other urgency I could always go back and work full-time for a good salary.
Also we have a son in college with a couple of more years to go (he is attending a state university within driving distance from our home). Daughter is soon to graduate high school and will probably do a 2 year CC program. So our expenses will be more expensive the next 2 to 3 years and then will go down markedly about the time that I turn 62 and could take SS. So continuing to work part-time smooths that out.
On the other hand.....
Work has become not fun. Our current house is about twice as far from the office (about 60 miles one way now) so going to the office a couple times a week is tedious. Also, I realized recently that the nature of my work has changed some so that I'm now doing more of the kinds of things that I don't really like doing.
There is also no pressing financial need to keep work. I've run Firecalc and Fidelity retirement planner multiple times with different scenarios. On the scenario run with our actual portfolio, we get a 99.1% chance of success. I've run variations (using only 90% of the portfolio, lengthening the years, changing spending, etc.) and the realistic scenarios are still 95% or better.
We've been in the new house for over a year now so I think I know our expenses now and how they will change when the kids are gone. We will have a high withdrawal rate for the next 2 to 3 years and that will cause the portfolio to go down. However, that has all been anticipated and is accounted for in Firecalc and the Fidelity planner.
DH (who has heard about this forum from me) says that I have One More Year syndrome. He thinks that an 85% or so chance of success is fine and pretty much thinks that I shouldn't be worrying when I have a 99.1% in Firecalc (and I can get it to 100% fairly easily with some very minor changes) and Fidelity planner says we're fine.
I think the hardest part for me is that when I fully retire...it really is burning bridges. That is, at my age (just turned 59) no one a year or two from now is going to hire me and pay me anything remotely close to what I could make working full-time now. DH says he doesn't know what is worse for me - the angst I have from working now when I am not enjoying work any more or the anxiety I will have when I quit work and know that I don't have that well paid job as a backstop. But, I also see the time passing and there are things I want to do that it is hard to do while working even part-time.
Anyway -- I am about 95% sure that I am going to fully retire in the very near future. Maybe 99%.
It has been in a lot of ways a wild 3 years. Three years ago I embarked on semi-retirement and then DH fully retired in June, 2010. Since that time I've worked 1 or 2 days a week.
The past 3 years have been a bit of a wild journey. When we started out we planned to sell our very large, expensive to maintain house with a plan to downsize, having already bought the house we planned to remodel and move into.
Well -- best laid plans and all that. Our house took a long time to sell (at a loss even). Then, the house we were planning to remodel needed so much more work than we anticipated - to the point that we decided to demolish and build new. And, after further looking at that we realized it would be much cheaper to buy an existing house. Finally a year ago we got settled into the house that we bought and then later in the year sold the other property (the one we had been going to build on). The whole thing was an overall negative financially. Still - we have been in our current house for over a year now and we really like it (and the sellers sold it for us for less than they paid for it so at least that worked out for us).
The bright spot in all that was that my part-time work arrangement worked out well. When I started I was going to work 1 day a week. Over time, that gradually crept up to 2 days a week. I think that I would have been much more berserk about the real estate stuff except for the fact that the financial losses from that were covered by my part-time work. My work was very well paid and basically has worked out to about $225k over the 3 year period, which ended up making a huge difference.
I always said I would work as long as I enjoyed it. The things that were great about the work was that it was the fun part of my work and I could do some of it from home.
At the beginning of this year I had no set plan to fully retire at any particular time. I was actually thinking of continuing to work for another couple of years. My thought was that it wasn't too onerous, continuing to work would lessen our withdrawals from the portfolio for the next few years, and my working was a little bit of a hedge against any market downturn that might occur in the next few years.
I've been told a number of times over the last 3 years that I could come back full-time and I've been offered the opportunity to work more hours. So, it has been ...comforting...to know that if there was a large market downturn or other urgency I could always go back and work full-time for a good salary.
Also we have a son in college with a couple of more years to go (he is attending a state university within driving distance from our home). Daughter is soon to graduate high school and will probably do a 2 year CC program. So our expenses will be more expensive the next 2 to 3 years and then will go down markedly about the time that I turn 62 and could take SS. So continuing to work part-time smooths that out.
On the other hand.....
Work has become not fun. Our current house is about twice as far from the office (about 60 miles one way now) so going to the office a couple times a week is tedious. Also, I realized recently that the nature of my work has changed some so that I'm now doing more of the kinds of things that I don't really like doing.
There is also no pressing financial need to keep work. I've run Firecalc and Fidelity retirement planner multiple times with different scenarios. On the scenario run with our actual portfolio, we get a 99.1% chance of success. I've run variations (using only 90% of the portfolio, lengthening the years, changing spending, etc.) and the realistic scenarios are still 95% or better.
We've been in the new house for over a year now so I think I know our expenses now and how they will change when the kids are gone. We will have a high withdrawal rate for the next 2 to 3 years and that will cause the portfolio to go down. However, that has all been anticipated and is accounted for in Firecalc and the Fidelity planner.
DH (who has heard about this forum from me) says that I have One More Year syndrome. He thinks that an 85% or so chance of success is fine and pretty much thinks that I shouldn't be worrying when I have a 99.1% in Firecalc (and I can get it to 100% fairly easily with some very minor changes) and Fidelity planner says we're fine.
I think the hardest part for me is that when I fully retire...it really is burning bridges. That is, at my age (just turned 59) no one a year or two from now is going to hire me and pay me anything remotely close to what I could make working full-time now. DH says he doesn't know what is worse for me - the angst I have from working now when I am not enjoying work any more or the anxiety I will have when I quit work and know that I don't have that well paid job as a backstop. But, I also see the time passing and there are things I want to do that it is hard to do while working even part-time.
Anyway -- I am about 95% sure that I am going to fully retire in the very near future. Maybe 99%.