Old Microbiologist
Recycles dryer sheets
I am 57 and retired from the Army in 1999 after 28 years. I have since been working Civil Service but am fed up working for the government (mostly as my boss is an ignorant ahole) and I am ready to retire. My wife is originally from Russia and wanted to be closer to her relatives there but to not actually live in Russia due to all the high costs and associated corruption charges. She is 61 and ahead of me in retiring. Being an insanely smart woman she took up day trading 3 years ago and averages over 100% a year (except for last year where we took a huge bath). However she has recovered 60% of our losses in the last 6 weeks and it looks like we will be ahead by a lot in a few more months. Luckily, we don't need those funds for some time to come. Between my civil service position and Army retirement I have been earning over $200K a year so she has been saving $7K a month to cover the costs of the move and renovations of the house. After searching carefully we decided Hungary was a great place to retire. I spent 6 years in Germany and speak German and Hungary is nearly identical except more centrally located in Europe with close access to the Alps and the Adriatic sea not to mention all the wonderful places in Europe. We are 90 minutes from Budapest and also from Vienna. We found a wonderful house in Balatonfured, Hungary near lake Balaton which cost us roughly $275K for a 300s.m. (roughly 3,000 sq. ft.) house on about 1/2 acre of formal gardens. We have an indoor swimming pool an indoor sauna and the house is only 10 years old. So, as of now we have $3K a month from my retirement and I expect to free-lance from Hungary for another $24K a year or so. As I am only 57 I have a while to go before I begin receiving Social Security. My wife didn't work he 40 quarters and will need to use mine. If I understand it correctly, that she will get half of mine but not until I begin drawing it at age 62. We will be moving later this Summer once I finish buying all the stuff we will need in Europe. We also have 3 houses here in the US but are waiting for the market to recover before attempting to sell. In the mean time the rent fully covers all the mortgages and in 2 of the houses adds $2K a month for 1 and $1K amonth for the other. The third pretty much covers the mortgage plus $200. We will bank the excess to cover non-renting periods and repairs. We have currently in our investment portfolio 2 rollover 401Ks coverted to brokerage IRAs at Scottrade, 1 SEP-IRA also at Scottrade, 1 Roth IRA at Scottrade, and 1 day trading brokerage account also at Scottrade. She plays regular with the IRAs (trading normally with 3 days clearance before repurchasing). The Brokerage account is now back over $100K after falling to a low of $16K in March. It is a crazy time and woefully we had cashed everything out last year and "thought" it had hit bottom and got back in only to be nailed hard. Not much one can do as all the bad stuff happens after market. Since then, we return to cash daily and are limiting profits to 10% a trade now. Things are so volatile you can trade the same stock 3 or 4 times a day and make 10% each time. But, you have to be absolutely familiar with the patterns and watch the level 2 traders very carefully to see what is going on. We also play on bad days with SKF which is a short financial stock that trades at twice the rat of actual fall of the financial sector so can be very hot. She also limits trades to 100 shares so they are easy to dump in an emergency. Anyway, the strategy works well if you are careful. The key is knowing the patterns and watch intensely. She limits herself to certain stocks about half of which are ADRs. Anyway, it will be an adventure and we are eager to get going. I look forward to seeing what other member so fthe group have to say and what advice they may have. I have researched among a bunch of Brits who retired to Hungary and 1000 Euros a month easily covers all expenses so we should be well set.