Levels of FI

[Teacher Terry]

I think it is hard to find that balance because it is nice to travel and have nice things but the problem is you don't know when you will die or become disabled. I have lost friends in their 50's and 60's. Right now we live on 70k/year which lets us take one big trip/year. WE also like to go out, etc. If suddenly I had a bunch more $ we would probably take 2 big trips/year but no more then that because I don't like to be gone too long.

 

[Major Tom]

I’m often surprised on this forum at how many people (and many are couples) are willing to retire on $40-60K a year in order to retire in their late 40’s or early 50’s. I don’t have the desire or the guts to do that.

Gosh, my annual spend of ~$17K would absolutely terrify you then , though thanks to about $5K of dental work, it will be in the low 20's this year.

Each to their own. We all have a material standard of living that we need/want to maintain in order to feel comfortable and happy. I think people get into trouble when they are not in touch with that and either overdo the frugality, or overdo the spending.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

I’m often surprised on this forum at how many people (and many are couples) are willing to retire on $40-60K a year in order to retire in their late 40’s or early 50’s.

We're not at super low spending levels compared to many posters here, but a lot lower for us than where we used to be. A big deal for us was simply optimizing our spending. We can live pretty much the same lifestyle as before but on a lot less money now. But some of it was chicken and the egg. We wouldn't have had time to analyze all our expenses without the free time we have now. Like we got rid of the landline for Ooma, cut most of the cable TV channels no one was watching anyway, switched the cell phones to Consumer Cellular, made the house energy efficient, joined some rush ticket memberships for concert and theater tickets, learned how to get free travel with the credit card point hacks, have time to cook more from scratch, and probably a hundred or more other expense improvements. And living on less means a lower withdrawal rate so lower income taxes.

If we had known how much we could cut relatively painlessly, we probably would have semi-ERed many years ago and both just worked part-time.

 

[plex]

Very relevant to me. I could work until my late 40's, and have a nice mansion and 5x more than I need for my normal expenses (~$100k/yr and a 20% pension), but I really value my time, have a ton of hobbies that I do in-between my work from home job, so I'm aiming for my late 30's, when I have 1.4x my expenses and a small 9% pension. I'll hit the bare-bones 1x at about 35 or so, the extra 40% will take another 2.5 years of work. If not for the law school loans, which have taken until 33 to get rid of, I could have hit those numbers 4-5 years sooner. Part of the miscalculation with law school was, I vastly overestimated how much money I thought I might need in retirement when I was younger, the law path required a much higher net worth goal for it to worthwhile.

 

[Looking4Ward]

I’m often surprised on this forum at how many people (and many are couples) are willing to retire on $40-60K a year in order to retire in their late 40’s or early 50’s.....

I retired in my early 50's and I would have to try really hard to spend $60K a year. It's just not in my DNA.....

 

[Helen]

I am really surprised at how little we are spending in retirement, and we are in our high spending (travel years). We are only spending about half what we had budgeted for.

We did a four month road trip by car in the winter which included a one week cruise, hotels, VRBOs, camping and staying with friends (Thanks Alan!!!). My biggest surprises were how little we are paying in taxes, but how much we are paying in health care.

We had a couple of stocks pull some crap on us which resulted in unanticipated income and we lost the health insurance subsidy for the past two years. I wish we were all in index funds, but the capital gains would kill us to sell the stocks and buy the index funds.

Anyway, we are going to up our gifting to charity with some of the unspent money.

 

[Music Lover]

I’m often surprised on this forum at how many people (and many are couples) are willing to retire on $40-60K a year in order to retire in their late 40’s or early 50’s. I don’t have the desire or the guts to do that.

And I'm surprised at how many people waste money by poor choices, too much house, too many new cars, etc., and spend $80k - $100k a year when they can live just as good on $50k with nothing more than a few simple smart painless choices. But they don't and then they can't retire in their late 40's or early 50's like many of us.

They are doing it wrong...the rest of us did it right.

 

[razztazz]

I’m often surprised on this forum at how many people (and many are couples) are willing to retire on $40-60K a year in order to retire in their late 40’s or early 50’s.

I am surprised by how many people think they need $40-$60k per yr to retire on. That is a ton of bucks

 

[RobbieB]

Nah, only 90 to 130 pounds.

A ton of money is a little over 900 grand.

 

[Big_Hitter]

is this a pole?

 

[OneDay]

Absolutely Music Lover, my dad retired on $30k a year 20 years ago when he was 48, he has never wanted for anything, his income is about $40k a year now. He has decent cars, travels quite a bit, spends two months in Florida every year. Does he have any debt, no, does he buy new cars, no, does he spend money he doesn't have, no. Is he happy, he's freaking giddy he didn't spend another 20 years working a job he didn't enjoy.

 

[eta2020]

I never thought about it like that. I have exact date planned and I will FIRE if I have 40k or 200k a year.

I have that date in my mind for at least last 20 years. Now I am counting months and it is less then average car loan length.

 

[FIREmenow]

I never thought about it like that. I have exact date planned and I will FIRE if I have 40k or 200k a year.

Me too. We decided on the date (5 years ago), and then resolved to adjust our lifestyle in whatever way would make it work with whatever we had at the time.

Now it isn't quite a 2x difference, mind you -- my planning/forecasting isn't THAT bad.

 

[FUEGO]

Has anyone on here found themselves wanting more after FIRE? Basically the numbers worked for an X K/yr RE but then you wanted more so those numbers no longer worked? I would like so much of a cushion that I could support a wide range or RE options.

No. I'm 3 years in and actually have more money/income than I know what to do with. We've spent $24k and 33k our first two years of retirement, and are on track to come in under $40k this year. These 3 years of retirement include big "one time" expenses like car replacement and major house renovation ($9k for new siding, new windows, and roof repair). We've taken multiple international vacations every year (7 weeks in Mexico last year, 5 weeks in the US and Canada this year; 1-2 Caribbean cruises every year).

I briefly had a moment of regret that we weren't 10-20x richer when I was researching some destinations in Europe for summer 2017's big trip. There's a really pretty lake in a scenic area kind of in the middle of nowhere in the Austrian Alps. The main hotel in town looked small but quaint, and not particularly luxurious. I figured we could stay there. Turns out it would be $1000+/nt for 2+ rooms to accommodate the five of us. No way I'm dropping that much cash!

But for a moment I thought it would be nice if spending $3000 for a few nights in a hotel was no big deal. We could clearly do it just this once, but not for long since we only budgeted $10,000 per year for vacations. I'd rather spend a week or two somewhere else in a nice airbnb rental that's <$1000 per week instead of per night!

It's just a fleeting moment of regret because I found a much nicer, larger chalet right across the little lake (that offers views of the quaint town!) for a much more tolerable €200 or so per night for up to six. It's an expensive area but we can afford to stay for a few nights. If I saved up enough to routinely afford $1000 hotels, I'd probably be working for another 10-15 years, and our family vacations would be 2-3 weeks per year max instead of the 7-10 weeks of vacationing we do now (plus the other 42-45 weeks that are basically a permanent staycation at home!). No way would I go back to work just to stay in an expensive hotel instead of researching and digging a little to find more reasonable (and nicer) accommodations.

 

[Hermit]

You folks nailed it!

There are numerous blogs and stories out there about people who are RE and living various lifestyles. ... Basically there is a bare bones FI where you can RE living in a small foreclosure (or tent, run down class C, etc...)

I live in a run down class A (I have my standards ).

I truly enjoy having more than I need. I didn't plan to retire as soon as I could, didn't hate my job, worked for a micro-corp.

I would rather spend my time planning how to blow more dough than clipping coupons and being frugal.

Your retirement is all about you. Do what you want to do -

I don't need to plan to spend more money. It just happens.

And I'm surprised at how many people waste money by poor choices, too much house, too many new cars, etc., and spend $80k - $100k a year when they can live just as good on $50k with nothing more than a few simple smart painless choices. But they don't and then they can't retire in their late 40's or early 50's like many of us.

They are doing it wrong...the rest of us did it right.

Yup. I spend about twice what I thought I would spend and am in those brackets.

And BTW, I am quite happy!

 

[UpAnchor]

I am surprised by how many people think they need $40-$60k per yr to retire on. That is a ton of bucks

Nah, only 90 to 130 pounds.

A ton of money is a little over 900 grand.

I don't know, guys. The way I figure it, a ton of bucks is somewhere between a half-dozen to a dozen and a half, depending upon whether we're talking mule or white-tail.

 

[flyingaway]

I have only worked seriously for 18 years. It makes me uneasy to think about a retirement life of potentially 40 to 50 years in the future. Think about how much the world has changed in the past 18 years.

 

[Teacher Terry]

Fuego, hard to imagine how a family of 5 can spend so little, travel so much and make big improvements to the home. Your COL must be really low.

 

[ugeauxgirl]

I have noticed that, the older I get the more I want. Three years ago I didn't have a strong desire to move, but now I want out, and to a nicer, more expensive area.

I feel exactly the opposite. I want much less than I did 10 or 15 years ago- also I care far less about what anyone thinks of how I dress, what I drive or how I live. I'd downsize if I could after the kids leave for college, but hubby says they're carrying him out of this house in a pine box, so I guess we're staying...

 

[haha]

Gosh, my annual spend of ~$17K would absolutely terrify you then , though thanks to about $5K of dental work, it will be in the low 20's this year.

Each to their own. We all have a material standard of living that we need/want to maintain in order to feel comfortable and happy. I think people get into trouble when they are not in touch with that and either overdo the frugality, or overdo the spending.

This is an amazing achievement, to live in the close-in SF Bay in easy reach of BART and spend so little. Your discipline is impressive. And that is a wonderful place to live. Last few days we have had beautiful Indian Summer weather in Seattle, but while your pleasant weather will continue, ours will get rainy before long.

Ha

 

[haha]

And I'm surprised at how many people waste money by poor choices, too much house, too many new cars, etc., and spend $80k - $100k a year when they can live just as good on $50k with nothing more than a few simple smart painless choices. But they don't and then they can't retire in their late 40's or early 50's like many of us.

They are doing it wrong...the rest of us did it right.

These are your opinions, not theirs. And for their lives, theirs are in charge.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

So no. Tag line says ER's in 2015, now back for TMY's. 2 more years.

Ah, gotcha. Didn't catch the TMY acronym.

 

[RAE]

I retired in my early 50's and I would have to try really hard to spend $60K a year. It's just not in my DNA.....

Yep, same here. We live a very comfortable life on quite a bit less than that. We have a very nice home, we travel as much as we want, we eat great home-cooked meals, we see the grandkids a lot, I have time for daily exercise/fitness, and I have a variety of hobbies and seasonal activities that I enjoy immensely. I could have worked longer (I retired at age 54.5) and padded the 401k so that we'd have more $$ in retirement, but to me it wouldn't have been worth it (and I really don't know what I would have spent the extra $$ on anyway). The freedom I've experienced to do whatever I want to do over the last 6 1/2 years has been something special, and I'm pretty sure I'll not regret retiring when I did.

 

[FUEGO]

Fuego, hard to imagine how a family of 5 can spend so little, travel so much and make big improvements to the home. Your COL must be really low.

It's Raleigh NC, in a mixed blue-white collar neighborhood. A paid off house and low property tax (~$1500/yr) helps a lot.

We also travel hack like crazy and usually get free flights to wherever we're going and most hotel stays are free. We try to stay in one place for a week at a time and get airbnbs so the nightly rate is somewhat low. Our 3.5 week trip to Canada this summer was a road trip in our new(used) minivan, so travel costs were very low ($200 in gas) and we only spent $1000 total (though landed 4 free nights in $400/nt hotel in Niagara Falls).

Cook most meals at home (though not bare bones rice and beans at all!). In the fridge: NC BBQ pulled pork (homemade from $.99/lb pork shoulders of course), some ribs waiting to be cooked (found at the store for $1.20/lb today when we walked down), and some sausages for some kind of pasta or sub.

Drive a used car, and only own one car right now (insurance is $350/yr total for 2 drivers for a half million coverage). Though we don't drive a whole lot because so much is walkable in our neighborhood (just today, tennis, park, trail, library, kids' school, grocery store). Walking = gym time (plus some yoga-ish calisthenics and a treadmill at home).

We host parties at our house occasionally. If it's for kids it's usually whatever kind of pizza has a BOGO deal, plus some beer/wine for the adults ($50-60 max usually).

Somehow we make it work.

 

[Teacher Terry]

Fuego: thanks for telling how you do it. I don't travel hack and we like to eat out, etc and spend about 400/month on that. We have 2 cars but when one dies will go down to one because some days our cars just sit in driveway. Our house is paid for and our taxes low too. our biggest expenses are our old pets and our health insurance -10k/year. WE also live in a walkable neighborhood. It was one of the reasons we down sized to this home.