Our First Year of Retirement!

Since my divorce I consider myself lean fire too. When I hit 15 years retired my col yearly raises are 5% a year. I still have went to Europe twice in the past 3 years and am going twice this year to visit my son in Kansas.

Like you I drive an old dependable car. I drive so little now that it doesn’t matter and if I ever do need another car it will definitely be a Toyota Corolla. I can’t believe a 16 year old car has never needed anything but brakes. This is my first Toyota.
 
Teacher Terry said:
Since my divorce I consider myself lean fire too. When I hit 15 years retired my col yearly raises are 5% a year. I still have went to Europe twice in the past 3 years and am going twice this year to visit my son in Kansas.

Like you I drive an old dependable car. I drive so little now that it doesn’t matter and if I ever do need another car it will definitely be a Toyota Corolla. I can’t believe a 16 year old car has never needed anything but brakes. This is my first Toyota.
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Slight thread drift: I peruse the yearly "car" issue of Consumer reports and always like to check out the section on reliability of used cars. IIRC they go back maybe 9 years or so. The reliability results are highlighted in colors (yellow for average, red for below average and green for above average.) I always know when I'm on the page with mostly Toyota models because it's virtually all green.

Returning you now...
 
Thanks for sharing your retirement story. I particularly like your reasoning for taking Social Security at 62 or 63 (ie., allowing your portfolio to grow for your heirs). My wife and I are in a similar position to do so.
 
You are almost completely dependent on your wife's pension. Is it inflation adjusted and have 100% survivor benefits? If not, I would be a bit worried.

Check out opensocialsecurity.com as the best source for understanding the optimum ages for SS benefit claiming. Make sure you scroll to near the bottom and click on different points on the graph and it will show you the present value difference vs. its optimization and what the annual benefits would be.

It's going to tell you that should claim at 62 and your wife should wait until 70. But not only is the difference between her claiming at 62 vs 70 not too large, it's actually worse if she waits until 64 vs 62 (after that it starts to get better again). The reason for the odd behavior is you can't get spousal benefits until she claims.

The assumed strategy the program is using is that you are spending down your bonds/CDs while you wait, not your stocks. The idea being that having more guaranteed SS income allows you to take larger risks with the remaining money.

Congrats on retirement and hope that all continues to go well.
 
Thanks for sharing your story and strategies. When people sometimes think of early retirement, they think one needs a mountain of cash stashed away. Your story will show others that there are various ways to get there.
 
Teacher Terry said:
Like you I drive an old dependable car. I drive so little now that it doesn’t matter and if I ever do need another car it will definitely be a Toyota Corolla. I can’t believe a 16 year old car has never needed anything but brakes. This is my first Toyota.
Click to expand...
We both drive VW Jetta's. Mine is a 2000 and my wife's is a 2004 (Our daughter has a 2003). We use my car most of the time now and I fill up about once or twice a month. My wife just got gas last week, the first time she filled up since February! :)

Overall our cars are fairly reliable and don't require much maintenance. Naturally, everything seems to fail at once when they do need repairs.
 
Sunset said:
Wow...... You really are LEAN !
That explains some of your earlier posts.

I certainly experienced not knowing what day it was, so I bought a $15 watch.. like this:
casio watch
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Yep, I have a couple of $10 Casio watches myself, and a cheap Timex watch I use as my "work" watch. The display is hard to read on that one, but I don't care if it gets dirty or scratched up.
 
Exchme said:
You are almost completely dependent on your wife's pension. Is it inflation adjusted and have 100% survivor benefits? If not, I would be a bit worried.

Check out opensocialsecurity.com as the best source for understanding the optimum ages for SS benefit claiming. Make sure you scroll to near the bottom and click on different points on the graph and it will show you the present value difference vs. its optimization and what the annual benefits would be.

It's going to tell you that should claim at 62 and your wife should wait until 70. But not only is the difference between her claiming at 62 vs 70 not too large, it's actually worse if she waits until 64 vs 62 (after that it starts to get better again). The reason for the odd behavior is you can't get spousal benefits until she claims.

The assumed strategy the program is using is that you are spending down your bonds/CDs while you wait, not your stocks. The idea being that having more guaranteed SS income allows you to take larger risks with the remaining money.

Congrats on retirement and hope that all continues to go well.
Click to expand...
Yep, my wife's pension is 100% survivor and inflation adjusted.

I download our social security statements, and use a variety of tools to calculate the outcomes of different SS filing ages. I always deduct 30% from the estimates in case SS isn't fixed. In our case, both of us filing at 62 or 63 usually results in the best outcomes overall. Yeah, filing later gives higher SS payments, but it means spending down more of our savings.

I'm not planning on spousal benefits even though they will probably be slightly higher than my own benefits. I tend to err on the conservative side with my estimates.
 
Glad you're enjoying yourselves! If you CARE about forgetting the day of the week (I did it too at first) having a set activity one day of the week fixed it for me. I volunteer on Tues so I have to plan around that, and it helps me remember.
 
Read some post on the board to the effect that Washington had a lower income program that allowed a three year lease of an electric vehicle for pretty much $0. Might be something worth investigating to see if you meet the criteria. All part of spending smart.
 
I actually rather enjoy living along with the rhythms of the world ... somewhat. Particularly the good parts. I had a career with a lot of weekend work, including Friday nights. I like Friday night being Friday night, Saturday being Saturday, Sunday being lazy Sunday (with no Sunday Scaries). I do feel like weekdays are still weekdays; I just have the bonus of not having to w*rk like others. But if I do want to do something w*rk-like, like my taking a class, Tuesday is like a day to get busy on it like other people really get going at their jobs. Wednesday is hump day, Thursday is back at it. So basically I feel like Mondays and Fridays and maybe Wednesday afternoons are kinda optional times, too. :) Oh, and holidays ... are definitely holidays.
 
mountainsoft said:
We both drive VW Jetta's. Mine is a 2000 and my wife's is a 2004 (Our daughter has a 2003). We use my car most of the time now and I fill up about once or twice a month. My wife just got gas last week, the first time she filled up since February! :)

Overall our cars are fairly reliable and don't require much maintenance. Naturally, everything seems to fail at once when they do need repairs.
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Do you have TDI or gassers?
 
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We have had 3 MKIV TDI Beetles over the years, and a MKVI.
I have one now, they are all still running out there AFAIK. it gets a boring 46 MPG without much variation tank to tank.
I thought maybe that was why your wife had not filled up in a while, it goes 650 a tank.
 
skyking1 said:
We have had 3 MKIV TDI Beetles over the years, and a MKVI.
I have one now, they are all still running out there AFAIK. it gets a boring 46 MPG without much variation tank to tank.
I thought maybe that was why your wife had not filled up in a while, it goes 650 a tank.
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We have owned several VW's over the years. Before I got my Jetta I had been driving a 1976 Rabbit for 36 years. Life With My VW Rabbit - Anthony Watson

As for my wife, she only drove 309 miles between Feb 17 and May 4. She used to drive more than that every week going to work. We use my car for most trips now but I only put on about 300 miles a month or less myself. One of the perks of being retired! :)

Most of our driving these days is to take care of our elderly mother's, who both live about 30-45 minutes away from us.
 
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