New Guy Here

[Retiredmajor]

Hi, I'm Tim. I just joined this site and am looking forward to learning and eventually maybe contributing. I'm 60 and my wife is 59. We are retiring later this year. Actually, she's retiring and I'm semi-retiring because I have a little hobby job that keeps me minimally busy but brings in some nice income each month. I'm nervous as heck! Like most everyone, I've worked all my life and the thought of losing that structure is throwing me a little. But, we feel it's time and we've got plans to keep us both reasonably busy. I ran my numbers through Firecalc and it has excellent results (no failures) and my investment advisor assures us that we are fine, but it's hard imagining living with no full time income. I keep looking for some tool to prove my numbers wrong, but I can't find one. Anyway, I'll be around....Take care! Tim

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

welcome, i was scared to death to retire, i chickened out the first time, enjoy every minute of it

 

[brokrken]

Congrats on getting there. Can't wait 'til I make it.

 

[Whisper66]

Welcome. If you are like many here, the nervousness will last only a very, very, very short time. The second day of retirement will be much better. LOL [emoji4]

 

[Retiredmajor]

I have a question: I've used Fireclac and it seems very good. I also tried ORP, but it doesn't seem to have the level of detail and flexibility that Firecalc has. Fireclac has me solid, my investment advisor has me solid but ORP has me as sketchy. One example is that we currently have a house payment which ends in a few years. Firecalc allows me to account for that, but ORP doesn't let me drop my expenses after a defined year. Does that make sense? Any thoughts?

 

[IMATERP]

Welcome. If you are like many here, the nervousness will last only a very, very, very short time. The second day of retirement will be much better. LOL [emoji4]

25 years ago I was fired from a job that I absolutely hated, I had the same insecurities about losing the steady structure and paycheck. By day 3, I was happier than I had been in the previous 5 or 6 years.

Sometimes you just need to rely on faith. I'm looking forward to stepping away in early 2018.

Michael

 

[Car-Guy]

Welcome.

You'll find many of us here were nervous about retiring "at first". A term you'll learn here pretty quick is the "OMY syndrome". (One More Year syndrome) I suffered though it twice (worked two more years longer than planned). Looking back now, I wish I had those two years back for retirement. Anyway, "so far" after five+ years, my pre-retirement/concerns/worries/etc, have all proven to have been false fears.

 

[MRG]

I was a nervous wreck. I couldn't eat properly. Staying at a k*b that was killing me or a leap of faith that the numbers work. Four years later, it's a great time.

The old PM sayings true. Plan the work, then work the plan. Go enjoy your life.

 

[rodi]

Welcome Retiredmajor.

If you haven't read it - you might want to read this thread:
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f47/some-important-questions-to-answer-before-asking-can-i-retire-69999.html

 

[Whisper66]

I have a question: I've used Fireclac and it seems very good. I also tried ORP, but it doesn't seem to have the level of detail and flexibility that Firecalc has. Fireclac has me solid, my investment advisor has me solid but ORP has me as sketchy. One example is that we currently have a house payment which ends in a few years. Firecalc allows me to account for that, but ORP doesn't let me drop my expenses after a defined year. Does that make sense? Any thoughts?

Here's two ways one could handle a few remaining house payments.....

(1) Pretend you've paid off the home in full with existing assets and just decrease the assets you have available today for retirement.

(2) Input up to 6 yrs of payments into the "Extraordinary Non occurring Events" blocks included in the "full ORP" form here https://www.i-orp.com/ORPparms.html



Edit: Another thing to keep in mind, the results of the two programs are different in how they include/exclude federal income taxes in the results.

Firecalc: If you run the investigate capability to tell you how much you can spend each year......the resulting number is total expenses including federal income taxes.

I-ORP: If you run it to calculate the maximum "annual after tax spending"....the resulting number excludes Federal Income taxes. Those taxes are included in the analysis and can be found on one of the supporting output pages.