Hello - here is my plan

GOJAGATORS

Dryer sheet wannabe
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Messages
16
What a great site. I've spent the last month searching a lot of old threads and found a tremendous amount of practical (as opposed to the usual 70-80% of pre-retirement income regardless of spending bologna) advice. Thanks for confirming my belief that its spending, not income, that determines retirement income needs.

Some background info first. I'm 50 and am a solo practicing Dentist. DW is about to celebrate her 21st anniversary of her 29th birthday and is ERed now. We got married(2nd time for both of us) and built our dream retirement house just over 2 years ago. DW's 2 sons are grown and on their own. I have a daughter in college and a son who is in his senior year of high school. College money is already saved in a seperate account. Our cars are paid for and we have no debt other than a 40K mortgage. We live very well on less than 50% of take home pay. I make about 230K/ yr. and we are very firmly in the 33% tax bracket.

Currently, we have 300K in our IRAs -80% stocks (mostly index funds and ETFs) and 20% fixed income. Outside the IRAs we have 50K in cash(emergency fund and money being saved toward a new car/major expenses), 70K in muni bonds and 40K in stocks in an investment club. No pensions or other tax deferred plans, since my staff at work unanimously preferes annual raises and fully paid health insurance to a retirement plan.

I love what I do, but I would like to do a little less of it by age 58/59 and would like to fund the possibility of quitting entirely by 62/63.

We are tracking our expenses now, to seperate out all the new home expenses from our actual living expenses.

So here is our preliminary plan. Fully fund IRAs yearly and:

2007(age 51) Child support ends (8 pmts to go, but who's counting??) and pay off the mortgage. We could argue the mortgage payoff versus investment options, but this is DWs #1 priority and I want her fully onboard the plan. Finish tracking actual living expenses and finish tweeking/ rethinking the rest of the plan.

2008(52) - 2014(58) buy enough(maturity value) zero muni bonds each year to meet about half the inflation adjusted retirement income we antipate needing for one of the years in 2020(64) through 2026(70). Based on current interest rates(yep- they'll change!!) this is about 1/3 of the after tax money we anticipate having available. Use the other 2/3, to buy stocks and/or muni bonds to maintain a roughly 75/25 stock/bond allocation including our Iras. Basically, my intention here is to have my personal version of an annuity stream available to meet lifes absolute expenses and to allow the market to provide the rest via dividends/ interest/ cap gains. It will also allow the tax defered money to grow until RMDs are required.

2015(59) - 2018/2019(62/63) Work enough to fund IRAs(possibly could do Roths then), provide health insurance and accumulate money for the dream vacation trips.

Well thats the basics of my plan for now. There are lots of little details also, but this has been a long post already. I've got plenty of time to play with the ideas and would appreciate any inputs you might have. Thanks again for a fabulous forum.
 
Welcome to the board, Gator.

Sounds like you have the expenses covered, and Social Security to follow soon afterward!
 
Gator, nice to see you here. You sound like a planner to the max which is the way to achieve goals and a LBYM devotee which is the way to get there fast.

How about bringing some fresh-faced youngster into the practice when you're ready to start cutting back, and lettiing him or her buy you out? That would probably make your patients really happy -- as far as I'm concerned having to find a new dentist is almost as bad as having to find a new barber ;)

Best of luck!

Coach
 
Coach said:
Gator, nice to see you here. You sound like a planner to the max which is the way to achieve goals and a LBYM devotee which is the way to get there fast.

How about bringing some fresh-faced youngster into the practice when you're ready to start cutting back, and lettiing him or her buy you out? That would probably make your patients really happy -- as far as I'm concerned having to find a new dentist is almost as bad as having to find a new barber ;)

Best of luck!

Coach
I'll definitely be looking at bring someone in down the road and mentoring them to take care of the patients. I really fear that I will have a terribly difficult time turning control of my patients care over to someone else until I'm sure that person has their best interests at heart. We'll see how things go when the time arrives.
Nords said:
Welcome to the board, Gator.

Sounds like you have the expenses covered, and Social Security to follow soon afterward!
Nords, I have given a lot of thought to my plan and finally decided to proceed with the idea that SS will just be found bonus money if its there. I'll be suprised if some kind of means testing doesn't exist by then that will disqualify me. That will frustrate me a little bit since every single year for the last 20 years at least, I've had to contribute more to SS than I've been allowed to put into an IRA
 
GOJAGATORS said:
I'll definitely be looking at bring someone in down the road and mentoring them to take care of the patients. I really fear that I will have a terribly difficult time turning control of my patients care over to someone else until I'm sure that person has their best interests at heart.

My dentist retired and some months later his daughter joined the practice after finishing school. I am going to the daughter. She is great. Actually has a lighter touch than her old man. :-X
 
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