Six years!

[walkinwood]

We started this ER journey 6 years ago on May 1st, 2008.

It has been a great, great time & I couldn't wish for anything better. We are happily settled in Denver (from NJ) with new friends, lots of interests and most importantly, good health & a healthy relationship.

This board has been really helpful during this time - providing information and a great sense of community. Thank you all.

 

[Al in Ohio]

Great to hear another success story. What made you choose Denver?

 

[FIREd]

Congratulations on your 6th retirement anniversary. Did you have second thoughts as the market was melting down just months after you had pulled the plug?

 

[walkinwood]

Our plan was to move out of NJ after ER since it is such a high CoL area. Even thogh we loved our town, our neighbors & the proximity to NYC, we wanted something different - slower, more access to the outdoors & less expensive, but still cosmopolitan, urban & progressive.

We visited a number of cities that we thought would be interesting to live in - Seattle, Portland OR were in contention, but then we visited Boulder & while there, spent a few days in Denver & loved it. So after some research & soul-searching, we made the leap. And luckily, it worked out!

 

[walkinwood]

Congratulations on your 6th retirement anniversary. Did you have second thoughts as the market was melting down just months after you had pulled the plug?

I spent some tense moments questioning the sanity of our decision to leave perfectly fine jobs! But after the initial shock, we decided to stay out of the work force for at least a year and then decide.

We use a percentage of our portfolio value on Jan 1 to set our budget, so we really had to tighten the purse-strings in 2009. But we found that we still had a wonderful time & could do a lot of fun things even with the reduced budget.

We went back to work in 2010 - me for 6 months part-time, DW for about 9. It helped us feel (almost more psychologically than financially) that we could make a success of ER.

 

[scrabbler1]

Congrats, Walkinwood. As a fellow 2008 retiree (5 1/2 years this week after an October 31, 2008 ER), I was a little nervous going into ER in a greatly tumbling market. But being able to buy thousands of more shares of my big bond fund at bargain-basement prices turned out to be a huge break even as the market kept tumbling into early 2009. But the market has recovered nicely since then although my big bond fund is not paying out as much per share as it used to (I have 25% more shares than I first bought in 2008).

I hope you have enjoyed the nice, big rebound in the markets since 2008.