46 and a long way to go!

[LynnBBQ72]

Hello! I'm a 46 year old female and my husband is 57. In the past few months I've really started to think about our retirement situation. I'll post more details about assets when I have the full picture. I know some parts of our retirement picture are good - My son is 30 and long out of the house, husband has no children, and we will not be responsible for our remaining parents' care. But we don't have a ton of money saved in our retirement accounts... maybe $300K all together.

I think our biggest challenge will be our age difference. He's 10.5 years older than me, but I earn about 33% more than him so that will be an odd situation. He plans on working until at least 67 (FRA) and I hope to retire around 62 if I can figure out the health insurance situation.

I don't have a question yet, and I'll spend the weekend looking up all of our details to post later. But there seems to be a wealth of knowledge here! And the stickies are very helpful.

 

[flintnational]

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Mdlerth]

Welcome, and don't be a stranger!

Hello! I'm a 46 year old female... I know some parts of our retirement picture are good - My son is 30 and long out of the house, husband has no children, and we will not be responsible for our remaining parents' care. But we don't have a ton of money saved in our retirement accounts... maybe $300K all together.

...I hope to retire around 62.

Take heart. The first 300k is the hardest.

If it's any consolation, you're ahead of where I was at your age. Admittedly, I was a late starter, but in my 40s was when I got serious. I boosted my savings rate with every pay raise and at 60 I'm in the home stretch now. Dunno how much you think you'll need, but the FIRECalc program can probably answer your questions about what shape you can expect to be in when you hit 62.

Here's another consoling thought. Surely you've heard the disclaimer: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." And so it is with any retirement estimating tool, FIRECalc included. But it's certainly going to be better than no data at all. A lot can happen in 16 years, and that includes a lot of GOOD things. May that be the case with you! I look forward to reading posts about your progress.

 

[MBAustin]

Welcome LynnBBQ! I don't think you're as far behind as you think, and you've got 10-15 years to get where you want to go, so good for you to take it on seriously.

The biggest thing you can do now is to put as much of your (joint) earnings into tax-advantaged retirement savings as you can each year, with an asset allocation that is comfortable for you but not too conservative.

The corollary to that is to look for areas to reduce spending to free up more $$ for savings. Most folks here believe that detailed spending tracking is critical for this. You might think $25 a week saved by bringing a travel mug of coffee on your commute instead of stopping at Starbucks five times a week is not significant, but if you find three more ways to save $25/week, that's more than $5,000 per year to go into savings. The best way to find these opportunities is to track your spending in detail and to budget how much each of you can spend "unaccountably" each month.

We look forward to your contributions and there are plenty of folks here to help with your questions. Enjoy!

 

[LynnBBQ72]

Thank you all for the info! Glad to hear I'm not as far behind as I thought.... I will absolutely look at our spending this week. We do waste money going out to eat several times each week so that is my first target.

 

[mystang52]

Welcome. I won't give specific dollar advice, just general approach: Come up with a workable plan for retirement saving, general liquid savings....and a budget for fun things like vacations along the way. "The rest is just details."