Hi all
I was in the Navy for 12 years until a medical discharge and have been working in the civilian power industry for the past 8 years now, I'm now 39 years old. My 3 service connected disabilities are currently being rated/reevaluated, but it looks like it'll either be a 90% or 100% overall rating now.
I'm single and have no kids. Current base income (not including overtime) is ~$84k. My current living expenses include a mortgage that I plan to have paid off in ~9 years (less if I get the 100% rating). If the mortgage was paid off today, my monthly expenses minus "fun" (but including TV/internet) is $2,200/month (rounding all the bills up). My vehicle is paid for and I have no debt outside of the mortgage. That $2,200 includes putting money away for home maintenance/repairs as well as saving for my next car.
My plan currently is to semi-retire in about 9 years. My job (technical writing as a SME) is one which there are numerous contract positions (most 2-4 months) that I could likely get each year to supplement my early retirement income. I should be able to earn ~$30-40k/year if I average 3 months of contract work/year.
I have $198k in investment assets currently. 401k total contributions each year are ~$21k with company matching and I put ~$13k/year in my brokerage account invested mostly in a stock ETF (VTI). By my estimation, that should put my investment portfolio at ~$700-800k by the time I'm looking to retire. ~$125k of that will be available in my brokerage account to supplement my retirement costs until my 401k can be used without penalty (assuming I don't utilize any of the "loopholes" for accessing it early). Unfortunately, I wasn't investing while I was in the military because I thought I'd have a retirement check (and I was young and stupid), so I've been playing catch-up for a while
.
Being able to utilize VA medical care for free will save me a significant amount as long as I'm willing to generally forego seeing other doctors (which I am).
My VA rating should provide a minimum of $1743/month (a shortfall of ~$400 from covering all my expenses). When I get 100% rating (my conditions get worse over time, so it's only a matter of time until the overall rating gets to 100% if it isn't granted now), then that will go up to $2,906/month which would cover all my "post-mortgage" expenses and allow for ~$700/month fun money.
Contract work at $30k/year should provide a take home of at least $2,000/month after taxes (averaged out). This will be replaced by SS and my 401k withdrawals when I turn 62.
That alone will cover all my expenses and allow sufficient money for me to enjoy fairly regular rounds of golf, relaxing, reading, and a couple vacations a year by my estimation.
I have a friend, also single with no kids, that is also considering doing the semi-retire thing around the same time (within a year or so).
FIRECalc results were:
Quote:
FIRECalc looked at the 29 possible 50 year periods in the available data, starting with a portfolio of $198,000 and spending your specified amounts each year thereafter.
Here is how your portfolio would have fared in each of the 29 cycles. The lowest and highest portfolio balance at the end of your retirement was $198,000 to $16,099,129, with an average at the end of $6,167,346. (Note: this is looking at all the possible periods; values are in terms of the dollars as of the beginning of the retirement period for each cycle.)
For our purposes, failure means the portfolio was depleted before the end of the 50 years. FIRECalc found that 0 cycles failed, for a success rate of 100.0%.
|
So, I figured this would be a good place to track my progress and get any advice on other considerations I may have overlooked. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on my plan.