Noob with ER dreams and many questions

[Marge]

Hello all! DH and I turn 60 this year and dreams of retirement are getting more realistic every day. DH still works FT, I 'retired' years ago.

We have a pretty nice nest egg with a 1.5 mil IRA (mostly stocks), a pension, and some cash. We just refinanced our home and will save four years on payments - ten years left. No other debts.

This is where the questions start. I am a total noob, dunce, ignoramus as far as retirement planning. I have no idea where to even begin.

Do I add up all our financial assets and plug them into FireCalc?

Should I sell most of the stock holdings and put them into funds?

How do I find a good health care provider?

As you can tell, I don't really even know what questions to ask and I'm a bit embarrassed about it.

Where and how do I start figuring this out

Thanks for reading this far - you deserve a !

Marge

 

[Midpack]

Welcome aboard. We're all noobs at some point, and we've all had to confront those questions and many others. I'd recommend a good book to give you an overview of many aspects of retirement, some reflected in your questions. Here's a good one you may be able to find, it's a very good overview/primer and you can read each section independently as needed - not written in a serial fashion, more of a reference.

And FIRECALC is free, so you can trial and error to your hearts content. You may have other questions after you've tried your personal data first.

 

[BigE]

This book has been very helpful and I'm rereading it right now. One important point that all the "recommended" books harp on is keeping fees low (ie fee paid to handle your money by brokerage firm, mutual fund, etc). Firecalc for example, runs the numbers based on 0.2% fees which is very low and unless you are with Vanguard for all your assets, the number is likely higher. Also, this book makes the point that anyone retiring before 65 should consider something less than 4% withdrawal rate. Good luck. All your answers can be found on this site.

 

[Marge]

Thank you both so much for answering! I will get the book and work through it.

This FireCalc - is it that tiny little box on the right side of the main FireCalc page? I've put in some numbers and I get back a graph with about 100 or so colored lines. I'm not sure what it is telling me?

 

[REWahoo]

Marge, you should read "How it works", then go through the tabs across the top of the FIRECalc "start here" page :

• Other Income/Spending
• Not Retired?
• Spending Models
• Your Portfolio
• Portfolio Changes
• Investigate

 

[Marge]

REWahoo, thank you. Tossing in just my IRA amount for 30 years @ $50.000 a year give me this:

Here is how your portfolio would have fared in each of the 111 cycles. The lowest and highest portfolio balance throughout your retirement was $360,284 to $9,424,787, with an average of $3,427,328.

Any other questions that come up will go into the appropriate sections of the forum.

I'm allowing myself to get a little bit excited!

 

[Midpack]

REWahoo, thank you. Tossing in just my IRA amount for 30 years @ $50.000 a year give me this:

Here is how your portfolio would have fared in each of the 111 cycles. The lowest and highest portfolio balance throughout your retirement was $360,284 to $9,424,787, with an average of $3,427,328.

Any other questions that come up will go into the appropriate sections of the forum.

I'm allowing myself to get a little bit excited!

Yep, 100% success IF history repeats itself (who knows). You're in good shape, just need to nail down some details and you're off and running, congrats!

 

[serie1926]

The Book | The Coffeehouse Investor

Great book!