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I haven’t gotten through this whole thread yet. But for now, I’ll share that I did reduce to 30/70 a year or two before I retired last year. My philosophy is that I don’t need to make another $x+y when the $x we already have is plenty. OTOH, $x-y would’ve meant working several more years. My...

I find these pretty close to GS thin mints, but cheaper. Of course, we’ve also often bought from GS too, to support their efforts. I just bought some of these today on sale at Stop & Shop. [emoji39] https://www.keebler.com/en_US/cookies-and-more/fudge-shoppe/grasshopper-cookies.html

Your situation is very similar to ours. But you didn’t mention if you’ll also get SS? We will, so we opted to get a $300k life insurance policy on my DW, as her survivor benefit would’ve cost her 10% of her pension. We plan to keep the life insurance until one or both of us get SS to fill the...

Congrats! I've been out a month now and it's so liberating. [emoji4]

I'm officially retiring from my IT Architect position at an insurance company on Dec. 1st at age 55. Running out some vacation time puts my last day of work at Nov. 3rd. Can't wait!

Substitute "Social Security" for "pension" and see how most people who expect half, 3/4 or more of their eventual SS benefits would be screaming. :( What if the federal government decided they'd rather not pay the people who paid into this their whole lives? Would that make the entire US...

Counting both of our pension values - 1.1m and 1m (per www.immediateannuities.com) - plus retirement and savings accounts, our home value is about 11% of total net worth. FWIW, DW's pension is from state (teacher) and mine from a very stable private company. I'm retiring in a few months (age...

I hear ya. My MegaCorp changed our plan about halfway through my career too. But they locked in what we'd earned til then, and only changed it going forward. I'll still get almost 60% (non-COLA) of my final salary amount when I retire later this year, and I never paid a dime for it, so I...

Ok, so as often happens with analogies, they easily fall apart. :) Let's say the plumber was hired by the CITY to repair a public facility. Can the city tell the plumber they don't want to pay? Or would they have to put the cost on ALL citizens? And I'm not sure that all companies or states...

Then suck it up and cut spending, as well as raise taxes - whatever it takes to pay the bills incurred. But it shouldn't be an option to just not pay contracted debt. Fix pensions going forward. But it's pretty unfair to put the burden mostly on those who did nothing wrong and held up their...

Bingo! That's because the rich lobby and the poor organize. The rest of us complain on forums and social media.

Thanks JPG. AS much as I try to tackle this mathematically/scientifically, I do realize it's a lot more art than that. Adaptability will be our friend, I hope. Good luck to you too.

We've been doing this the past couple years and I'll explain why it made sense for us. YMMV, but here goes... I hope to ER from Megacorp late this year at age 55 when I will get my non-COLA pension - from a very stable company at which I've worked my whole 30-year IT career. 54YO DW could...

You're right that it was "go-forward" as far as the money. But her retirement age went from 28/30/35 years of service - by which she could've retired at the earliest at age 50 - to a new formula that pushed her to a minimum age 59. :mad: This was when she was already age 48+! Talk about being...

Fine. Then substitute "social security and Medicare" for pension, and see how the shoe feels on the other foot. Oh wait though, that will never happen simply because the majority of citizens would be impacted. So it's ok to vote away anything the majority doesn't benefit from. Gotcha...

This is a problem. Just because a majority of people don't have something doesn't mean they should get to vote it away for those that do. Maybe alter it for the future (like my private mega crop did 18 years into my career), but not undo contracts that were already honored by one party. My DW...

Isn't that 3 options? ;D While the latter two don't satisfy anyone who chose a career that didn't offer a pension, they also don't violate contracts. The vast majority of people don't have a lot of money saved either, but FDIC protects the assets of those who do. There are lots of things that...

Thanks everyone for sharing your insights on budgeting for big- ticket items!

I always wonder when I see these discussions if early retirees who are living on half or less of their pre-retirement incomes have been retired long enough to have had to make some sporadic big purchases like new car(s), a new roof, and other things that maybe just haven't surfaced yet? In my...

Regarding helping out with weddings... Am I the only one who feels, if we wanna help, we should do so equally for DS as for DD? I mean, in these days of equality, isn't the old "parents of the bride pay" rule outdated?

+1, except for the moving out on their own right after college. I'm 50 and DW will be this summer. Seeing we have the means to help, and we've paid off our mortgage, saved for retirement, have pensions and LBYM, we feel compelled (not obligated) to give them a nice head start. If we didn't...

In my case, my private employer matches 100% of the first 6% I save (vested immediately). DW's public school system doesn't match. So combined with my 10% annual contribution, I do consider that "I'm" saving 16%/yr. Combined with DW's 10%, "we're" saving about 13.5%/yr. We've never...

+1. I've stayed 27 years at a private company and will get around a 55-60% pension at age 55 - for which I never contributed a nickel. My DW will get 60% of that when I'm gone. Plus same health benefit plan as now til Medicare. I think the plan is over 90% funded. I'd say the average tenure in...

I respect those who have the tolerance and desire to track to that level, but I certainly don't. If I felt like we needed to tighten up, I could see getting down to that level of detailed tracking. For us, I know the details of what we pay in taxes, what we save, and other big bills like...

I didn't make a straight-line depreciation assumption at all. ;) I simply said that: So ignoring salvage value (as they'd be the same) and loan interest (as you may have paid cash upfront or had an insignificant loan rate), either car costs $2k/yr due to what you paid and how long you drove...