disneysteve
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2021
- Messages
- 2,378
In addition to all of the great info and opinions I've gotten from the fine folks here, we did opt to engage the services of a CFP to look over our plan and weigh in on the "can I retire?" question. This person happens to be a relative who we've known for many years and trust and respect. He is as far from the sleazy salesperson type as you can get. We told him upfront that we were not looking for a money manager and were not looking to be sold anything. We purely wanted his professional opinion on our readiness as well as his input on where best to draw income from once in retirement.
We had our first meeting with him on 10/22. At that time, we gave him all of our data including our portfolio spreadsheet, our SS statements, our 2020 tax forms, etc. We talked a lot about our lifestyle, our spending habits, and our goals and dreams for retirement.
We had our follow up with him yesterday. He took all of our data and ran a variety of projections with different retirement dates, different withdrawal plans, etc. In all but one scenario that he modeled, our predicted success rate was 100%. In the one outlier, our success rate was "only" 99%, which I found quite humorous to be honest. I was like, "Well, there you go. No way I can retire now. We're doomed to fail."
The 99% scenario was the one where he had me retiring completely as of January 2022 and not earning any income after that. I don't intend to stop earning money entirely though. What I actually plan to do is drop to per diem status and only work a few shifts per month. Adding in 30K/yr or more in ongoing income for even a year or two would make that prediction 100% too.
My part time status officially starts on 11/28, just a week away! I'll give that a few months to see how I like it. If it's going well, I'll continue it for a while. If not, I'll give my notice to drop to per diem at that point. Time will tell.
And in case anyone is wondering, he initially told us he would give us a discount off his normal fee, but he ended up not charging us at all so I certainly can't complain about the price. My wife and I agreed that we need to do something for him to thank him for his time.
We had our first meeting with him on 10/22. At that time, we gave him all of our data including our portfolio spreadsheet, our SS statements, our 2020 tax forms, etc. We talked a lot about our lifestyle, our spending habits, and our goals and dreams for retirement.
We had our follow up with him yesterday. He took all of our data and ran a variety of projections with different retirement dates, different withdrawal plans, etc. In all but one scenario that he modeled, our predicted success rate was 100%. In the one outlier, our success rate was "only" 99%, which I found quite humorous to be honest. I was like, "Well, there you go. No way I can retire now. We're doomed to fail."
The 99% scenario was the one where he had me retiring completely as of January 2022 and not earning any income after that. I don't intend to stop earning money entirely though. What I actually plan to do is drop to per diem status and only work a few shifts per month. Adding in 30K/yr or more in ongoing income for even a year or two would make that prediction 100% too.
My part time status officially starts on 11/28, just a week away! I'll give that a few months to see how I like it. If it's going well, I'll continue it for a while. If not, I'll give my notice to drop to per diem at that point. Time will tell.
And in case anyone is wondering, he initially told us he would give us a discount off his normal fee, but he ended up not charging us at all so I certainly can't complain about the price. My wife and I agreed that we need to do something for him to thank him for his time.
