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New guy loves taking about early retirement
Hey everybody, Im glad to be here and like the details a lot of you give, which I think makes a forum much more relevant and interesting.
I'll turn 62 in August and my 6 year anniversary of being retired is July 1. My wife is 55 and we retired at the same time, July 2015. Since I was divorced just 5 years earlier I felt pretty good about that, having recovered pretty quickly with the help of an unexpected $270K inheritance when my dad died in 2012.
Since it was late 2012 one of the first things I did was buy a home since I lost one in the divorce. A $450K townhome in San Diego that is now worth $800K after another $150K in improvements.
I just refinanced that to a 20 year loan at 2.5%. A modest move that knocked off 2.5 years but reduces principal at a much quicker rate should I decide to move 5 or 10 or 15 years from now.
Another trigger toward retirement in 2014 was an unsolicited offer on an apartment building I owned that was $100K more than anyone thought it was worth. It was paid for and I netted $517K.
Now Im really thinking about retirement. I took the conservative route and used $400K to pay off a loan I had on another apartment building. I greatly regret that now since I had a very low( but 100% variable) interest rate and at the time everyone thought rates would rise. Id be paying about 2% right now and how nice it would have been if I had put that money into the stock market instead. Oh well, but I now have an apartment building that grosses $100K per year.
In Jan 2015 , during a slow time with my small printing business I thought Id run and an ad to sell it and see what happens. I got an offer pretty quickly and it closed July 1 and Ive been retired since.
I had used the Retirement Mentor calculator with very conservative numbers and it said I had enough to live 30 years spending 120K per year. So thats what I did, About $70K after taxes and expences from the apartment and another $50K withdrawl from my portfolio, which at the time was 7% of my $700K portfolio. I was okay with that since I had the stable Apartment income I knew was going to continue to grow( im in San Diego) and I wanted to do home improvements and travel. We took two 3 week trips to Europe a year apart and did a remodel.
Today I run the retirement calculator today with just 6% return, 3% inflation, and 25 years, this time adding in my wife's modest portfolio, and I get $140K per year. Due to those results I was able to buy my daughter and grandkids a house just recently, 2.5% over 30 years.I took on a $1108 payment for an unspecified period of time. Getting a loan as a retired person can be a real challenge, as Im sure a lot of you know.
My biggest worry in retirement has been getting health insurance since I have a pre existing condition. The ACA has been great for me though I had to not raise rents or spend enough on Apartment building expences to qualify. The timing of this years' modifications to the ACA could not have been better since Im running out of "cheap money" in my portfolio. I was resigned to spending $15-18K per year for a few years; you could say there were some benefits to Covid for me.
To conclude, Im very thankful I've been fortunate enough to retire pretty early despite a divorce at 50 and some bad investments, and I get to live in San Diego!
And Im really looking forward to participating in this forum, I love taking about retirement and feel Im good at it, both mentally and financially.
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