Hello everyone

[PlayinwithFIRE]

Been reading this board for a year or so. Been great to help me prepare a bit for the future and make me aware of things I wasn't-thank you for that. In general I feel I am behind compared to other stories I've read here but trying to make up ground. Feeling behind is always part of my drive-i need that stress..so its cool for me to feel that way

I'm 53, FT employed at about 180K / year. Don't wanna work forever-maybe retire at 60 if possible. I also don't expect large changes in pay as I do not want more responsibility.

Wife works part time for fun and contributes to household expenses which are about $5k/month. We are watchful of our budget and feel we are doing pretty good at $5k/month in a 4 person household. I could always do with less wine and cheese..but c'mon !

2 Kids, one just started college-been saving for this since born-about 120K available-this should cover him for 4 years . 2nd one will start college in 3 years-estimating $160k needed (maybe more he's smart and may go places) about $130k saved for that so far. These are state school rates.

An unexpected windfall occurred for us recently, my company was gobbled up by an even larger company and private stock options payed out. This means we are able to pay for the first kids college out of pocket, so we converted that 120K above to our retirement...which sits about 1M right now. Looked better a few months back...

I contribute the 50+ catchup max to my 401K which with company match is something like 33K/year and normally dump 6 or 7K in an IRA at tax time when that bill appears.

We did start some 9.6% ibonds -which is about $60k direct and in gifts.

We try to keep a year of liquidity as a safety net-so about $60k in bank accounts.

House is payed for, cars are payed for-hopefully both will last awhile-though I find myself on Bring A trailer website often looking at '66 Chevelles . Solar panels are up and paying the electric bill.

Will is done (COVID drove this forward for us earlier than we anticipated).

My financial advisor just brought up Long Term Care Insurance ...and I have to begin looking into what that's all about I guess. First google seems to imply that its a vehicle by which insurance companies take for years and then throw up every roadblock possible in hopes you die before they have to pay. So no different than any other type of insurance haha.

I've tried firecalc a bit, and with a target of something like $80K/year spend , it seems like most scenarios end up with us in the + if we live to 90 (which I wont) . I'm a lab scientist and 20 years has taught me to be highly suspect of models and their promises. So i take firecal with a grain of salt, knowing that its limitations are my own knowledge.

Any suggestions or things I should focus on are welcome advice.

Nice to meet you all.

Alright-back to my pinot !

 

[arcyallen]

Suggestion for being able to FIRE: Stop looking at Bring a Trailer. Or at least, make sure you stop at just the "looking" part.

It sounds like you have everything under control. You're spending way less than you make. You're heading in the right direction. And you have a general plan. You could play with the numbers to see if it makes sense to save more through an IRA/401k for your wife.

And I kid about the Bring a Trailer - you saved up all this money, and when the times comes you'll be able to comfortably spend it without reservation. There used to be some decent bargains on there, now it seems everything is selling at a crazy premium (one of my personal indicators that we're in the Irrational Exuberance stage of the market).
My best friend actually just got a restored '66 Chevelle from his father in law. I'm not an old car guy, but it's pretty cool. He had a '69 and this was a substantial upgrade.

 

[Lewis Clark]

Welcome!

Firecalc (and other similar calculators) make no promises. They cannot look at the future. They can only look back and see how you would have done in the past.

Hopefully, the future turns out to be no worse than the worst combination of conditions in the past. : )

 

[finnski1]

Welcome. Congrats on where you are so far.

$5k/month for 4 is very good. DW and I spend about $45/year for 2.

Sounds to me(for whatever that's worth) like you have a solid handle on all aspects of your planning. Keep up the good work.

 

[pacergal]

Welcome to the forum. Looks like you are well on your way.
Enjoy the journey towards retirement, and have some fun along the way!

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

Welcome! I would be suspect of any promises made by retirement calculators, because nothing is certain, but not the models. Sure, things can happen to break the models, but as I've said to family and friends, if the US dollar or stock markets crash and burn beyond recovery, we'll have a lot more to worry about than our portfolio! I feel like the models are showing us what's probable, but I've also used them to look at outliers and try to plan for more flexibility on either end of the spectrum. I know my retirement budget has a lot of unnecessary spending in it, so I've looked at both necessary and optional spending with an eye towards what expenses I would prioritize and under what circumstances.

And good luck with college! I am guessing you're saying the younger child might go on to graduate school. Our excellent pupil got a merit scholarship (~50%) to a small private school, so our payments will be about $140K for 4 years, and I'm hoping they will get TA positions if they go to grad school, sometimes those can pay for much or all of the expense.

 

[Dtail]

Welcome to the forum. Everything sounds good overall.
When you use Firecalc, do you plug in your Social Security estimates, or at least 75% of the estimates? Many folks leave out this number and that reasoning IMHO is just way too conservative. So make sure to include.
As to Long Term Insurance, yeah it is a bit of a crapshoot. Many 3m+ households self insure. Folks with your investment level gets a little trickier. I personally believe these companies continue to misprice the product and make up for it with at times very large premium increases. Not a buyer myself.

 

[PlayinwithFIRE]

Thanks all -

Yes for the college tuitions, I had estimated based on in-state public university values for the 2022 and 2025 starting years. This was 120k and 160K when I last checked (probably higher now) .

I have put in the SS values starting at 62, and the expected retirement dates and continued contributions until retirement ...which leaves a (2-5) year gap where we are chewing thru retirement savings without SS benefit. I tend to use the 5 year gap to be conservative.

I assume a 25 yr timeline rather than 30 for the model.


The Firecalc result is as follows:

The lowest and highest portfolio balance at the end of your retirement was $-598,397 to $5,919,299, with an average at the end of $1,928,892. (Note: this is looking at all the possible periods; values are in terms of the dollars as of the beginning of the retirement period for each cycle.)

For our purposes, failure means the portfolio was depleted before the end of the 25 years. FIRECalc found that 12 cycles failed, for a success rate of 90.6%.

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

Welcome to the forum. Everything sounds good overall.
When you use Firecalc, do you plug in your Social Security estimates, or at least 75% of the estimates? Many folks leave out this number and that reasoning IMHO is just way too conservative. So make sure to include.
As to Long Term Insurance, yeah it is a bit of a crapshoot. Many 3m+ households self insure. Folks with your investment level gets a little trickier. I personally believe these companies continue to misprice the product and make up for it with at times very large premium increases. Not a buyer myself.

I'm one of those, I include my tiny pension to make the numbers work but not SS. I have a long time to go and so far my retirement isn't looking good from a SORR perspective so I don't mind being a bit conservative.. I'll be happy to BTD tomorrow. On my personal spreadsheet planning out withdrawals out to age 99, I do include my SS estimate.



I currently anticipate self-insuring my long term care (and also try to keep on my nephews' and neice's good sides) As much as I dread it, I'll likely get a modest 6-figure inheritance sometime in the next two decades and may very well earmark it for LTC and invest accordingly (not part of my planning).

 

[PlayinwithFIRE]

Out of curiosity- I wanted to get a feel for rough percentages which i have in the different types of accounts.

Brokerage ~ 18%
Traditional IRA ~ 55%
Roth ~ 0.5%
401K ~ 20%
iBonds ~ 5%

I have a timeline of about 5 years to when Id really like to be retired. Should I be moving money around between these taxable, tax deferred types of accounts or is that something to worry about once retired? Is there a target % i should be aiming at between each of these buckets?

thank you