How big was your nest egg when you FIRE'd?

[Dash man]

We have enough. We're spending more than our plan this year for remodeling our Florida condo and getting a new roof this month for our PA home. But we have a large cushion, so it won't affect our long term spending plan.

 

[Danmar]

I am super conservative and can keep working indefinitely if I wanted and saving more money. But, I balance that with wanting to enjoy my life and other passions. While everyones situation is different and nest egg is just one component, I was sorta curious if most people were more or less than this. Obviously pensions, location, lifestyle, make a big difference, I was just sorta wondering. Last thing I want to do is die at my desk still saving because it's never enough.

(I apologize for saying an actual dollar amount. If forgot that isn't cool on here)

For all the reasons you mentioned, the size of the "nest egg" is somewhat irrelevant. "Just curious" makes sense but there is much better data available in previous polls, as pointed out.

 

[Danmar]

https://www.immediateannuities.com/

We retired with ~$200k in savings/investments, but a well-funded COLA'd pension that according to the link above has a current value of many, many millions. I don't know exactly because the max amount invested on that site is $5 million and the resulting annuity is considerably less than the pension.

Likewise, but I think you can use a multiplier, ie if your pension is twice the amount for a $5million investment the pension should be worth 2x$5million, no? Being Cola'd is the real issue I think?

 

[ShokWaveRider]

40 x projected annual Expenses, Not including home or SS.

 

[Mo Money]

At retirement, about 47x annual spend. Mr. Market has bumped it up to about 55x. SS will be a bonus, to the degree it's there when I'm 67ish.

 

[braumeister]

https://www.immediateannuities.com/

We retired with ~$200k in savings/investments, but a well-funded COLA'd pension that according to the link above has a current value of many, many millions. I don't know exactly because the max amount invested on that site is $5 million and the resulting annuity is considerably less than the pension.

You're joking, right?
Or did you miss that the site gives a monthly, not annual payment?

If you're serious, that's the biggest pension I've ever heard of.

 

[97guns]

Total net worth at FIRE $284K

 

[FREE866]

Reading this thread just got me really nervous.
I'm 6 months in and have only ~27x my annual expenses, yet cfiresm and FIRECALC have me at 95-100% success ratio

 

[Ready]

When comparing net worth and expense multiples, these threads can be confusing because some people are posting as a single person and some people post the combined savings of them plus their spouse. But two people will also spend more than one person, so their savings does need to be higher than that of a single person.

 

[kcowan]

Since taking early retirement the first time at age 49, there have been so many twists and turns that any number I quote you will be meaningless. What it takes more than anything is a commitment to make it happen somehow. Be willing to adapt, change, move or whatever!

 

[scrabbler1]

Because I was only 45 when I ERed back in late 2008, the relevant part of my nest egg was the part in the more readily accessible taxable account, not so much the nest-egg-in-waiting tIRA. The accessible part of my nest egg was $600k while the tIRA was $235. This was near the depth of the 2008-09 recession so since that time both parts of the nest egg have risen a lot, the taxable to $900k and the tIRA to $500k.


The only things which haven't risen over that time are my age ~60+ "reinforcements" which are my frozen company pension and SS. As long as the taxable account gets me to age ~60 intact (and at worst I may have to tap into principal a little bit, so far I have only added to it), I will be okay. This is for one person, me.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

I must be doing something wrong on the annuities calculator but am not getting huge net present values for pensions. For example an immediate annuity costing $1M yields about $59K a year non-COLA or $46K a year with a 2% COLA. So I don't know how you guys are getting these multi-million NPVs unless your pensions are very large.

ill provide details on mine, maybe im running it wrong. My pension pretax is 103113, i took the lump sum payout of 172000. so it reduced my pension by 10844 a year for life. so if i took max pension it would have been 113957. i threw that number into the immediate annuity link and that what i got. my pension is NOT cola. we do get 180 a year raise (15 bucks a month pretax) from some sort of contract deal.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

People here who've been unusually fortunate generally don't like to provide explicit details, but I think you hit the nail on the head right there.

see above for my details, im not shy about sharing. My name was posted on page 2 of the new york post as having the 6th highest pension in the history of the nyc police dept for retirees under 50. i got calls from relatives saying is that you? Its been almost 10 years since i retired so ive dropped to like number 1200 now. I should have retired 5 years earlier my pension would have been about 22 thousand a year less(take home). That would have been better than making some list.

 

[2017ish]

see above for my details, im not shy about sharing. My name was posted on page 2 of the new york post as having the 6th highest pension in the history of the nyc police dept for retirees under 50. i got calls from relatives saying is that you? Its been almost 10 years since i retired so ive dropped to like number 1200 now. I should have retired 5 years earlier my pension would have been about 22 thousand a year less(take home). That would have been better than making some list.

One downside of public employment! (Glad that my relatives don't know--although I imagine that they make some guesses...)

 

[audreyh1]

+1 on SS to cover future inflation.

PE's are not a good indicator of the future course of the stock market. Play this from the point at 19 minutes 12 seconds. I do not do any trading based on this guy but he is interesting.

That gap was later filled. And there were more gaps, and those were also filled. All gaps since Feb were filled in May, then the market ramped up to new highs (with no current unfilled gaps).

It's a month out of date FWIW.

 

[jkern]

Retired summer of 2009 at age 51. Nest egg $900k ($500k cash, $400k 403b). Total cost of living $55k per year. No pension, paid off house.

 

[FREE866]

Retired summer of 2009 at age 51. Nest egg $900k ($500k cash, $400k 403b). Total cost of living $55k per year. No pension, paid off house.

So you retired with just 16x of yearly expenses. If you had that money invested in stock market you've done very well. Just curious to see how 8 years later how you're doing?

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

When I quit my job and retired in May of 2016 I had 29x living expenses. Today I have 32x living expenses simply because I do not need all the income I get, so I put it back in the market, plus the gains the market has given me. That and the fact that I feel poor around here compared to a lot of the others. But I am doing alright, especially considering the progress I have made the last couple of years.

 

[FREE866]

When I quit my job and retired in May of 2016 I had 29x living expenses. Today I have 32x living expenses simply because I do not need all the income I get, so I put it back in the market, plus the gains the market has given me. That and the fact that I feel poor around here compared to a lot of the others. But I am doing alright, especially considering the progress I have made the last couple of years.

Yeah, I think there is a tendency for people to be hyper conservative when planning....I guess you can never be too cautious, but still

 

[Marita40]

I'm single and plan to retire in six years at age 66 with 2.5 million and a paid off house (worth about 400,000). No pension or other income except ss. Obviously not early retirement, but given the longevity in my family I could easily live into my 90s.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

Yeah, I think there is a tendency for people to be hyper conservative when planning....I guess you can never be too cautious, but still

I think its because I quit my job at age 46, and I was planning on staying on the job until 52. The other issue is hanging around on this forum drives one to do better because there are so many high achievers here. Eventually, if one is dedicated to doing better, then hanging around here has got to have some kind of positive effect.

 

[Yarnstormer]

Not retired really - but working part time at home and sooo much happier. I guess if you use the annuity thing and apply it to a rental property I participate in I pulled the trigger with only 900k
But I plan to keep working at home indefinitely, unless the need for group health insurance forces me back into an office. It is an option, as long as you have skills that work at home - and connections to get the work. Sometimes I won't do anything for a week or more. Nice!

 

[mickeyd]

When I retired I was way short of the $1B that I had hoped that my stash total would have amounted to. I have managed somehow to make it so far on much less than that amount.


Don't worry about us, we will be just fine.

 

[Walt34]

You're joking, right?
Or did you miss that the site gives a monthly, not annual payment?

D'oh!

You're right - I missed that it was a monthly payment, not annual. The amount of $1.2 million invested is much closer.

 

[ABQ2015]

see above for my details, im not shy about sharing. My name was posted on page 2 of the new york post as having the 6th highest pension in the history of the nyc police dept for retirees under 50. i got calls from relatives saying is that you? Its been almost 10 years since i retired so ive dropped to like number 1200 now. I should have retired 5 years earlier my pension would have been about 22 thousand a year less(take home). That would have been better than making some list.

My federal salary can be looked up on a database that is updated each year. I have not seen a similar database on federal pensions but it is relatively easy to calculate a fed's pension once you know their final salary and whether they are in the current retirement system (FERS) or the previous system (CSRS). Federal employee 401k accounts, the TSP, are not advertised of course. But few TSP accounts are greater than $1M although that number is increasing. TSP is only 30 years old and consists of index funds. The largest TSP accounts are those where financial types and lawyers have taken high profile public sector jobs in DC and rolled over their 401k into the TSP.