Hi from MdaPetralia – rookie retiree

[MdaPetralia]

I have been a long time follower on this forum and finally decided to join so I can contribute what/when I can.

I retired at 53 in early 2020 after 30 years of service in IT for the same mega corp. My DW does not work outside the home. We have no kids.

As COVID hit just around the time I retired, we have not traveled much. Only small day trips here and there. I'm a DIY guy so spending most of my time fixing/rehabing our house as well as serving as a volunteer handyman to family/friends (no interests in doing this as a full/part-time paid gig though). I also have been doing some volunteer financial coaching a few hours per month.

We both have medical issues and thus opted for the better, and more expensive retiree medical plan instead of an ACA plan after COBRA expired a few months ago. Medical premiums and out-of-pocket expenses by far are our highest expense (around $30K/year). I do get some subsidies from my former employer to off-set our medical premiums.

Our WR has been just under 2% the past 2 years and I'm estimating it to be just around 2% in 2022. We have no debt, live way below our means (we can't seem to shake frugality), and own our home outright.

Asset allocation is currently around 50/50, mixed among after-tax, 401K, ROTH and Traditional IRA accounts, with about 4-5 years of living expenses in cash.

About 30% of our assets are in pre-tax accounts so looking to do our first ROTH conversion by EOY to either the top of 12% tax bracket or 0% CG bracket (I'm having trouble convincing myself right now to push my CG/Div's into the 15% CG tax bracket when I can pay $0 tax on it). From what I'm reading and projecting our RMD's to be at 72 together with SS, I should do more but looking to play it conservative and go small our first year converting. I may post some questions in this regard as we get closer to the EOY and I fester a bit more about it.

 

[finnski1]

Welcome and congrats.
As a fellow hard core DY guy I can appreciate all that this entails.
I have been retired for several years and still can't fully shake frugality either. It's just the way I'm wired. I have been spending a little more on things lately now that we are in our 60's.

 

[pacergal]

Welcome to the forum. Sounds like you have been enjoying your retirement so far!

 

[upupandaway]

Welcome! I'm 40 and work in IT but my time has been spent with more then one company. (Mainly because of acquisitions) I'm also on course to pull the cord around 53 to 55 depending on lots of factors. I'm curious do you do much with computers now that you are retired? I'm kind of burnt out on corporate IT but I love electronics and gadgets. I'm thinking when I call it quits cloud computing and corporate infrastructure are going to be a thing of the past for me and I will stick to DIY, wood working, and probably gadgets. I was just curious form a fellow IT person that has already pulled the trigger if you still dabble in your old vocation.

 

[MRG]

Congratulations!

I left MY IT position in 2013 after 29 years. Planned on 30 but Megacorp got too intense and I bailed. Great to be able to do that.

 

[MdaPetralia]

Welcome! I'm 40 and work in IT but my time has been spent with more then one company. (Mainly because of acquisitions) I'm also on course to pull the cord around 53 to 55 depending on lots of factors. I'm curious do you do much with computers now that you are retired? I'm kind of burnt out on corporate IT but I love electronics and gadgets. I'm thinking when I call it quits cloud computing and corporate infrastructure are going to be a thing of the past for me and I will stick to DIY, wood working, and probably gadgets. I was just curious form a fellow IT person that has already pulled the trigger if you still dabble in your old vocation.

I wrote my first program/script last week since retiring! It was a DOS command file to back-up personal files to secure storage space on the cloud. The script basically compresses/zips personal files, bookmarks, etc. from the paths I give it, puts a password on the zip file and saves it to the cloud.

I was more on the software/programming/IT project mgmt side of the house, not involved too much with computer hardware/equipment. I am also less interested in electronic gadgets. e.g. I basically just use my mobile phone for calls, listening to pods casts and map navigation and I do leave the DVR and TV remote programming, clock setting, etc to my DW to do!

 

[ThunderFIRE]

Welcome to the forum! I'm retiring tomorrow at age 53 after 30 years in engineering, project management, and construction for a couple MegaCorps.

My wife wants to work a bit longer, but I expect she'll retire next year. We are also very frugal but I expect that we will spend more in retirement (at least at first) because we've been too busy to spend much money the past several years. We want to travel internationally while we are still in reasonably good shape.

We are at a 60/40 asset allocation and also have several years of emergency fund in cash (which is probably too much...but in addition to being frugal I am also very conservative). I was an agressive investor for the last 30 years, so I'm OK with being more conservative now even if I miss out on some returns.

 

[MdaPetralia]

Welcome to the forum! I'm retiring tomorrow at age 53 after 30 years in engineering, project management, and construction for a couple MegaCorps.

Congrats! How about getting up late Monday morning and eating out for breakfast?

It took me a few months to get use to my new schedule after retiring. The one thing that took me a long time to shake was feeling guilty if I didn't maximize or have a productive day. Now just making an espresso for me and a cappuccino for my DW each morning makes it a productive day!

We want to travel internationally while we are still in reasonably good shape.

That was my and my DW's plan as well but COVID put a damper on that. Not sure we are ready yet to tackle traveling internationally with all the dynamic restrictions, testing requirements, etc. I have problems wearing a mask for only 15 mins let alone for what would be almost 12 hours if traveling international (between in the airports, on plane, mass transportation to airport/hotels).