$100,000 and other good news

[REWahoo]

Does anybody care to share their experiences from the last 3 years?

On the plus side we've been on RV trips to New Mexico, Colorado, Arkansas and numerous trips within Texas. We've also been on a cruise to Key West and the Bahamas and celebrated the birth of our fifth grandchild.

In the bad experience column, I lost my brother to lung cancer and my FIL to a stroke. I've also been deeply involved with our neighbors in lobbying against the state approving permits for a rock quarry next to our subdivision.

Oh, and my portfolio has been up and down and up and down...

What type of experiences have you had, Dude?

 

[Nords]

When these ancient threads are [-]exhumed[/-] revived it's always interesting to see who's wandered off.

We made a couple Mainland college trips, swapped out tenants in our rental home and did a lot of upgrades to the place, completed some major home improvements, finished expanding our photovoltaic array, bought a bunch of stuff like a used Prius and other Craigslist bargains, and did a lot of surfing.

Oh, yeah, and there was that 58% drop in our ER portfolio. But that's come back in the last year.

The last of our three-year 6.25% PenFed CDs matures in a couple weeks. Ouch.

 

[Khan]

I still haven't tapped my portfolio, am working on it.

 

[Westernskies]

When these ancient threads are [-]exhumed[/-] revived it's always interesting to see who's wandered off.

And sometimes more interesting to see who's wandered in.

 

[Calgary_Girl]

I've noticed this also more and more lately. I always heard it takes money to make money. Now I know what they were talking about!! Our net worth passed $1.25 million in March and it keeps magically growing....

Mmmm, let's see. Three years later and our net worth is now $1.44 million. Growing in the right direction but not without hiccups . Last year when it seemed like everyone was selling and putting their cash under their mattress, we were buying buying buying. On the personal side, we now have two kids, DH started a new job in 2008 and I'm currently on my one-year maternity leave and not sure if I'll be going back to work in November.....

 

[W2R]

I managed to retire right on schedule and I am doing fine financially.

What's not to like?

I, too, wonder about old threads that are dredged up when the original participants may not all be around to respond. I wasn't even a member here when this thread was begun. Just thought you'd like to know how I'm doing anyway...

 

[bbbamI]

Any Does anybody care to share their experiences from the last 3 years?

Financially, I have more money now than I've ever had.....and pension checks have been coming in for over a year.

Personally, I've experienced too much loss.

 

[scrabbler1]

Any updates to this thread. At the time of this thread, the market was rallying and everybody was experiencing nice gains.
Does anybody care to share their experiences from the last 3 years?

Cheers, The Dude.

Three years ago at this time, I began my reduced P/T work schedule, going from working 3 days (20 hours) per week to 2 days (12 hours) per week. While this helped relieve the stress related to my awful commute, getting me home an hour earlier on the 2 days I made the trip, I knew there was a good chance this would not be enough. I was stepping up my plans to retire early, by the end of 2008.

Because I switched from 20 hours to 12 hours, I became ineligible for my company's group health plan, going to COBRA instead (for 18 months). I offered to pay 100% of the premiums instead of the 50% I had been paying sine I began working P/T in 2001, but they balked because I was now part of a "high-risk" pool of people near Medicare age (not me, I was only 44 at the time) who were working less than 20 hours per week, so it was not fiscally affordable. I told them they were providing subsidized health insurance for hundreds of people who did not even work for the company such as retirees, spouses, and children of covered employees (regardless of age or degree of risk) so why couldn't they offer coverage to me, someone who was actually working for the company?

On the personal portfolio side, I was nearing the $1M mark in investments, most of which was retirement accounts. [It took a dive in 2008.] The company's stock value was still rising quickly so if/when it got to the $300k mark, I felt I could cash it out at low, cap gains rates (NUA). That happened in late 2008 so I retired.

I did pierce the $1M mark in investments in late April 2010, but the declining market has pulled me below that mark again. Oh well. As long as I am getting about "the big nickel" per share on my big bond fund's monthly dividend (from the company's cashed-out ESOP), I will do just fine. And I am.

 

[Cassius King]

I really enjoy these "reflective" threads. Gives people on the thread a chance to learn from others experiences by them recapping their life over this period.
Being the first person in my family to ever have a FIRE goal, I'm very interested in these experiences from people that are doing it first hand.
As a younger man, I always wanted a book written by my elders of "If I knew then what I know now" type of stuff.

Cheers!

PS. I didn't mean to drudge up an old thread. When I started my other thread on a closely related topic, this thread was suggested at the bottom of the page. My apologies if this is frowned upon in these boards.

 

[FIREd]

Any updates to this thread. At the time of this thread, the market was rallying and everybody was experiencing nice gains.
Does anybody care to share their experiences from the last 3 years?

Cheers, The Dude.

Compared to 3 years ago, our finances are markedly better. Our income and net worth are up 100+%. Yes, we were hosed in 2008 (29% loss), but with some aggressive investing in late 2008/early 2009, we did great in 2009 (62% gain) and, despite the latest slump, we are still doing fine in 2010 (24% gain YTD).

What has changed? We work even harder than 3 years ago and we are starting to feel burned out. This has prompted us to modify our FIRE plans and consider semi early-retirement. SER will allow us to start slowing down much earlier than originally planned while postponing withdrawals from the nest egg.

 

[seabourne]

Since I had another thread in here when I hit my $250k about 2 months ago, I'll chime in - I'm back under and will need to schedule another small celebration when I get back over it in a month or two. barring disaster, i'm contributing enough and saving enough to offset the losses. That and the second summer job on boats ramping up means more income for a few months as well. That money is paying for a trip to Nice, France this fall after the sailing season is over priorities after all!

 

[jblack]

Like several other 'Young Dreamers' here, we're still in the accumulation phase....so even though we experienced the market swings we are well ahead of where we were 3 years ago with the help of continued automatic investments.

I learned that we had the correct risk tollerance for a 80% stock allocation in our portfolio and fortunately we stayed the course throughout.

....but even I got a little nervous when the DOW was under 7000

 

[lhamo]

Three years ago I had just left an awful job situation with a six-month transition plan in place (had funding for intensive language study, which also supported the career-planning/job searching period I needed). I was considering many different options, including doing my own start-up. We had moved to a new city and were pretty stressed out working out long-term housing and school options for our two kids. It was good to be out of the awful job situation though. Our nw was closing in on the 1mm mark -- the fact that investments were doing so well combined with the fact that we had a large cash stash was one of the main reasons I felt comfortable walking away from the old job with nothing definite in place to follow it up with.

Three years later I have a job I am much happier in -- great boss, great co-workers, much less stress. The kids are in schools we are happy with, too, and seem to be prospering there. We bought a condo at the low point in the market last year -- sunk a big hunk of our cash stash into that, and took on a substantial mortgage besides. But it paid off as values have almost doubled since we bought it. We could not buy or rent a similar place today for what we are paying. Net worth, including equity in the condo at current market prices, is now over 1.7mm. We continue to max retirement contributions and put substantial amounts in the kids college accounts, and still have some savings left on top of that. Still have a sizable cash stash in the event DH's job goes south (mine is pretty secure).

All in all it has been a rollercoaster three years, but mostly a fun and pleasant ride.

lhamo

 

[hankster]

Three years ago, we were nearing the finish line on an aggressive 2 1/2 year campaign to pay off all our debt except the house. We then decided to make a major change in preparation for an earlier retirement by selling our house and taking advantage of a low cost rental arrangement through my company. This has really enabled us to ratchet up the savings rate.

We rode out the downturn DCA with our contributions and occasionally re-balancing toward a more comfortable (for us) 50/50 AA. 2 1/2 more years to go until DB pension and retiree medical, but I'll likely stay 5 more years to enhance the pension amount and build additional savings. DW chose to semi-ER this year.