I'm a military dude and my wife and I have convinced ourselves that upon the golden 20-year mark or thereabouts we can sever ties to the workaday world. I guess I was hoping someone else could take a look at our situation and let us know if we're way off-base here.
The stories and progress every details on this site is incredibly inspiring, especially Nords' own success. I hope to follow in his footsteps. I'm approaching the 8-yr point in my career with a little way to go to make Captain (I'm a prior enlisted type) and getting near the end of a long, long road into a fighter jet (if I can ever get over the constant airsickness). My wonderful lady recently finished her nursing degree but only had a few months in her new job before quitting when we discovered to our great joy that we're expecting our first child. I'm hoping to make O-5 with some luck or at least Major around that 20-years in service point in 2019-2020.
Financially, we have an excellent safety fund in our savings account, close to $65K in IRA and TSP accounts, about 80K in equity in our 200K home, one paid off car (but another new car with a five year loan), and I make about 60K/year after taxes.
We figure she'll be back working in about a year making somewhere around 50K. Our expenses are around $36K/year, leaving us 24K per year to play with or 74K/year once she's working again and we can save her whole salary.
Obviously the USAF can throw a few wrenches into our best laid plans, but I may have the opportunity to stay at my current base for up to seven more years. The plan is to drop as much as possible into our mortgage and try to pay off the house within 2.5 years (2009-2010 or so). From there, we figure we can just bank all that mortgage money (about $12K/year) on top of our discretionary income, giving us $86K (74+12) or more, especially once I make Captain and the flight pay increases start hitting.
At that point I'll have a decade to go in the service til the earliest retirement point. Keeping it at the purely conservative knuckle-dragger lieutenant level of math, I figure that's 86K times 10 years = $860K. I imagine that we'll probably get some pay raises, perhaps bonuses, and interest an such along the way...so possibly resulting in a million or so. ( I like round numbers)
Alright, so that leaves us with a paid off house, almost a million bucks, a pension worth $45K/yr or more if I'm lucky, expenses around $30K/yr (all these figures are today's dollars), and whatever is in the IRAs and TSP for down the road with age 60 rolls around. I'm 29 now, so all this would happen around age 41-42. Oh yeah, we'd have a little one getting ready for high school before too long as well.
The goal is for us both to quit, never work again, and basically be able to do whatever we want (within reason) for the rest of our (hopefully long) lives.
Opinions on the plan? It seems too simple and almost too easy... I feel we MUST be missing something huge here that invalidates this whole idea. Otherwise, why doesn't everybody do the ER thing?
The stories and progress every details on this site is incredibly inspiring, especially Nords' own success. I hope to follow in his footsteps. I'm approaching the 8-yr point in my career with a little way to go to make Captain (I'm a prior enlisted type) and getting near the end of a long, long road into a fighter jet (if I can ever get over the constant airsickness). My wonderful lady recently finished her nursing degree but only had a few months in her new job before quitting when we discovered to our great joy that we're expecting our first child. I'm hoping to make O-5 with some luck or at least Major around that 20-years in service point in 2019-2020.
Financially, we have an excellent safety fund in our savings account, close to $65K in IRA and TSP accounts, about 80K in equity in our 200K home, one paid off car (but another new car with a five year loan), and I make about 60K/year after taxes.
We figure she'll be back working in about a year making somewhere around 50K. Our expenses are around $36K/year, leaving us 24K per year to play with or 74K/year once she's working again and we can save her whole salary.
Obviously the USAF can throw a few wrenches into our best laid plans, but I may have the opportunity to stay at my current base for up to seven more years. The plan is to drop as much as possible into our mortgage and try to pay off the house within 2.5 years (2009-2010 or so). From there, we figure we can just bank all that mortgage money (about $12K/year) on top of our discretionary income, giving us $86K (74+12) or more, especially once I make Captain and the flight pay increases start hitting.
At that point I'll have a decade to go in the service til the earliest retirement point. Keeping it at the purely conservative knuckle-dragger lieutenant level of math, I figure that's 86K times 10 years = $860K. I imagine that we'll probably get some pay raises, perhaps bonuses, and interest an such along the way...so possibly resulting in a million or so. ( I like round numbers)
Alright, so that leaves us with a paid off house, almost a million bucks, a pension worth $45K/yr or more if I'm lucky, expenses around $30K/yr (all these figures are today's dollars), and whatever is in the IRAs and TSP for down the road with age 60 rolls around. I'm 29 now, so all this would happen around age 41-42. Oh yeah, we'd have a little one getting ready for high school before too long as well.
The goal is for us both to quit, never work again, and basically be able to do whatever we want (within reason) for the rest of our (hopefully long) lives.
Opinions on the plan? It seems too simple and almost too easy... I feel we MUST be missing something huge here that invalidates this whole idea. Otherwise, why doesn't everybody do the ER thing?
