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12 years 120 with no-cola pension covering our bare essentials at the start

For us, the rain in Hilo feels warm. Since you are wearing swim trunks with pockets, flip-flop "slippahs", an all-polyester T shirt, and maybe a hat to keep your glasses dry, a little warm water doesn't matter. Your phone and your wallet are in zip-lock bags. It isn't a rain storm, it is just...

If I said I was going to do it, I will do it when I get around to it. You don't have to mention it every six months!

Beachfront is cheaper outside the US. Panama uses US money, so there is no exchange rate. Their only minted money is a one dollar coin, a Balboa. Puerto Armuelles Panama is a village on the Pacific coast. The cost of beachfront real estate there is missing a digit. The tiny beachfront lots...

ER has been the best years of my life. Having leisure time is joyous. Sometimes my day is full, when I have no spare time since I sat in the recliner and read a book, cover to cover, that day. That is my version of a full day in retirement! x2 on the avoiding the weekend recreators. When I...

Big Island costs less Look into more affordable Hilo on the Big Island (BI). Maybe skip the Puna hinterlands 15 miles away from there. On BI, Kilauea-Kona is too warm (needs A/C) and too expensive, but the temperature drops as the elevation rises higher on the side of the mountain. The...

Headed for Big Island of Hawaii in November since the spouse is now through in the garden for this year. We like the shoulder season between the summer families and those snow birds that look just as old as we do. The return flight from there, late on Thanksgiving Day, was cheap.

11th retirement anniversary today. I thank you all here at e-r.org for helping me into what became the best, the most enjoyable and carefree years of my life.

17 GC trips I've been down the river, through the Grand Canyon, seventeen times. Once as a passenger on a commercial trip in 1979, once in my kayak with commercial support, and fifteen times in my own raft on those private permit trips in the 1980s and 1990s. All of the river guides are very...

been there x6 We fly non-stop to Kona to avoid changing planes in Honolulu. Costco is near the Kona airport but is across the main highway. We stay on the 3rd floor for the breeze at the Manago Hotel in Captain Cook when we are on that side of the island. The nearby local grocery store is...

Muddle through We retired in 2005 with a buffer of cash. As tightwads, we just spent less during 2008-9 by watching expenses, traveling less, eating out less often. Currently with 35% in bonds, next time we will just sell from them. As mentioned by others, don't sell from the assets that...

IIRC, in the late 1990s from Mutual Fund magazine, Goldman Sachs had an S&P500 index fund with an annual fee of 1%. So yes they did have the hot mutual fund, the 500 index fund, but it was not low cost, it was the highest cost 500 index fund on the list sorted by expense ratios. GS stock might...

It is likely graft, expensive investing fees, chasing hot investments, and promising higher benefits to get votes to stay in office. The Western States Teamster Plan was busted for being so crooked in the 1970s? that a federal judge was looking over their shoulder for the next 30? years. The...

So far, delayed gratification has worked well in my life, so I'm delaying SS and converting tIRA to RIRA from retirement day until RMDs start. At the top of the 15% bracket, for Married Filing Jointly, the effective tax rate is 10.8%. Probably won't get any better than that, although the tax...

We moved from the city into the small town (5000 population) in the 1990s, then moved five miles away from it in 2005 for retirement. DW loves it here with the raised bed gardens that I built. I'm tired of the half hour round trip to town plus the time in the store for anything we need. In...

And your life has not changed, other than fewer aggravations.

For what it is worth, the VPW site shows the annual portfolio values for a 1966 retiree. As my retirement progresses, it is comforting to compare my history of portfolio values to the worst case of 1966, regardless of which WD method is used.

Been FIREd for ten years, still occasionally having the I-can't-get-there-from-here work dreams. Having recognized it as a very mild form of PTSD, I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one. Thanks for the tip about waking up and feeling grateful to be gone from there. I stayed at the most...

OP's plan is good w/ its variable income of fixed % WD @ the OP, your plan looks good. I like your willingness to accept the variable income of the flat percentage WD of your recent annual portfolio value. WDing that way is not a problem even for the slightly higher percentage draw during...

Finished the first ten years of retirement from age 55 to 65 with the same real portfolio value as retirement day, due to no-COLA pension income. Are we finished with FI/RE and starting normal retirement? That decade was the best years of my life, thank you E-R.org.

Who has had or will have a million $ portfolio for thirty years?

On the Big Island of Hawaii, there was a hang tag with a 2" diameter hole in it on the mirror. The rental guy said that if the damage was smaller than that hole, no problem. I popped a tire and damaged the rim pulling off on one of those paved roads that is only a lane and half wide. The...

Retired from, without a plan of "to" I retired to get away from my job, expecting anything to be better, much better. My first eight years of being workless became the best years of my life. I spent several months looking into various recreation and volunteer activities until I found what...

Retirees are Workless. I like the sound of that, it makes me smile. I wish the same to you.

In retirement, you can become who you want to be, instead of who you had to be in order to do your job. Can you imagine reading a book, cover to cover in one day? Retirees get to do that. During my second year of retirement, I found volunteer work that suited me well. The first 6-8 years...