Trying to land the plane with minimal turbulence...

[Cessna152]

It's an entirely different kind of flying... altogether.

 

[Bamaman]

Sounds as if you as a couple need to go into retirement spending mode now and try out living on the lesser amount. If a more frugal spending program cannot be executed the next couple of years, ER may just be a pipe dream for now.

I am fortunate to have a wife that is more frugal than I (am). But I still had to take real control of all family finances when she failed to control credit card spending.

 

[Golden sunsets]

One question-what has your spend rate been including taxes as a percentage of your investable assets, for the past several years? And assuming that your state and federal tax burden is higher now than it will be in retirement, backing out your tax burden from your recent spending and adding back your anticipated taxes in retirement to your recent annual spend rate, what is that % of your investable assets? If that % exceeds 3.5%, then I think you have some serious thinking to do and if that % exceeds 4%, then I'd suggest your aren't there yet. Don't forget Uncle Sam owns 24% or more of your deferred compensation portfolio.


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

 

[Dtail]

We cut our expenses over a 3 year period before retirement around 60%. Granted a very large portion was due to moving out of a HCOL plus the end of alimony payments.

However, other cuts were due to an agreement with the DGF that in order to have a healthy Entertainment and Travel expense budget, we needed to review every expense and cut stuff like clothes spending, housecleaning person.

DGF has been great about the cuts in expenses and are loving retirement and still doing lots of stuff. Must be on the same page in the end.

I would rather clean my 3 bathrooms weekly than go back to work....