Never dreamed

[Alderman]

A poor man’s journey:

I opened my first savings account when I was nine and was working a paper route so I’ve pretty much always been a saver.



When I first started saving and investing I never dreamed I would reach this milestone.
A common factory laborer putting away whatever extra money was available, my goal was to have a little saved to supplement my retirement, realistically thinking I could have $200,000 saved by the time I could stop working and thinking $300,000 was lofty wishful thinking.
A paltry sum to many of the people here but the reality to a lot of the working class folks.
As things worked out, the day before my 65th birthday I reached the 1 million dollar mark.
Three years into retirement we continue to live comfortably on the pension and social security funds but it sure feels good to have something to fall back on and makes all the scrimping and saving over the years worth while.

 

[Bamaman]

Congratulations on meeting your milestone. It just shows you that time and compounding are certainly our allies in working toward retirement.

You're a testament to conservative living.

 

[finnski1]

A poor man’s journey:

I opened my first savings account when I was nine and was working a paper route so I’ve pretty much always been a saver.



When I first started saving and investing I never dreamed I would reach this milestone.
A common factory laborer putting away whatever extra money was available, my goal was to have a little saved to supplement my retirement, realistically thinking I could have $200,000 saved by the time I could stop working and thinking $300,000 was lofty wishful thinking.
A paltry sum to many of the folks here but the reality to a lot of the working class folks.
As things worked out, the day before my 65th birthday I reached the 1 million dollar mark.
Three years into retirement we continue to live comfortably on the pension and social security funds but it sure feels good to have something to fall back on and makes all the scrimping and saving over the years worth while.

Way to go!

 

[mistermike40]

Nice, congrats!

 

[latexman]

A pension, SS, and $1,000,000 nest egg. That's brilliant!

 

[Digger1000]

Congratulations. Most people would kill to be in your position.

 

[Go-NoGo]

Well done..
Shows what saving and investing, LBYM and setting goals can do.
Congratulations !

 

[flintnational]

Alderman, well done. Congrats. My DD is about to graduate college and I am planning to have the "savings" talk with her. I printed your post to inspire her. Excellent! Thank you.

 

[street]

I'm very happy for your success. The power of saving early and time is a formula for success.
Enjoy your time doing what you want too.

 

[Vincenzo Corleone]

Well done, Alderman. You're better off than 90% of households in the US. Enjoy your retirement!

 

[disneysteve]

Great story. It's such an important message. It's not how much you earn; it's how much you keep that matters.


With a pension and SS that covers your needs and $1M in the bank, you're golden. Enjoy yourself.

 

[Out-to-Lunch]

Thanks for sharing your heartening story. And congrats.

 

[wdwwildbill]

Awesome job.. !! I'm close to same boat but without the pension ,, save,save,save
Enjoy your retirement.. You earned it !

 

[ut2sua]

OP, thanks for sharing your great story. This is wonderful for folks out there that don't think they have a shot of making it to FI. Personally, DW and I were wishing of much lower numbers than we were able to achieve. It is a great feeling.

 

[Alderman]

Awesome job.. !! I'm close to same boat but without the pension ,, save,save,save
Enjoy your retirement.. You earned it !

Unions, love or hate but when I first went to work at the factory, truck drivers with their union were making considerably more money than what the factory was paying.
For quite some time our union was able to get us 100% paid insurance, 10+ percent annual raises, and 7 weeks annual paid vacation after 20 years of service. Also a pension while not a great one, but better than nothing.
Now the unions are weak and new hires for the past several years won’t get a pension, pay big copayments for less insurance coverage, work for 70% of the wages of those hired before, and a big reduction in vacation time.
Gotta believe this will make the journey a lot harder for many.

 

[bbqcoder]

As things worked out, the day before my 65th birthday I reached the 1 million dollar mark.
Three years into retirement we continue to live comfortably on the pension and social security funds but it sure feels good to have something to fall back on and makes all the scrimping and saving over the years worth while.

Wow, that's really great! You and your wife should be so proud!

I have a daughter who will be 18 next month. Got her into putting some of her earnings into a mutual fund (taxable) and Roth IRA a few years ago. She already has $14K saved up, $3K just from appreciation. Her boyfriend comes from a blue collar type family with zero knowledge of investments/IRAs. He's eager to learn how to put away some of his earnings similar to my daughter. The tough part will be to not get worried when there's a downturn at some point in the future. That is, to ride out and continue investing.

 

[Dtail]

Great results and it just goes to show that not everyone needs to be in a high paying white collar job to be able to enjoy retirement from a financial perspective.

 

[disneysteve]

Wow, that's really great! You and your wife should be so proud!

I have a daughter who will be 18 next month. Got her into putting some of her earnings into a mutual fund (taxable) and Roth IRA a few years ago. She already has $14K saved up, $3K just from appreciation.

When my daughter was 16 or 17, I "forced" her to report her babysitting earnings so that she could then open a Roth. She contributed for a couple of years and then stopped for the 4 years she was in college. She started again when she started working and continues to put at least 15% in. She's 25 now and I think has about 20K in there already, maybe more.


The most important part of any investment plan is starting one and sticking with it. Compounding is a miraculous thing.

 

[Dash man]

Well done! You took the first step at a young age and kept on going! Very similar to my former father-in-law. Living the dream!

 

[bbqcoder]

When my daughter was 16 or 17, I "forced" her to report her babysitting earnings so that she could then open a Roth. She contributed for a couple of years and then stopped for the 4 years she was in college. She started again when she started working and continues to put at least 15% in. She's 25 now and I think has about 20K in there already, maybe more.

That's awesome! I was nagging my oldest daughter (college junior) to transfer money from her savings to her investment account for multiple weeks. She finally did it a few weeks ago so we can put it into her Roth IRA. The next step is for her to pay closer attention which probably won't happen until she's out of school.

 

[MRG]

OP very well done. I like how you did it and you're referring a million as "something to fall back on".

 

[jazz4cash]

Congratulations. Great story and thanks for sharing. Being on the salary side of a large company I knew that whenever the union won something for their members megacorp would usually throw us a bone as well...maybe not as good as what the union got but we still benefitted from their bargaining.

 

[skyking1]

Unions, love or hate but when I first went to work at the factory, truck drivers with their union were making considerably more money and Han what the factory was paying.
For quite some time our union was able to get us 100% paid insurance, 10+ percent annual raises, and 7 weeks annual paid vacation after 20 years of service. Also a pension while not a great one, but better than nothing.
Now the unions are weak and new hires for the past several years won’t get a pension, pay big copayments for less insurance coverage, work for 70% of the wages of those hired before, and a big reduction in vacation time.
Gotta believe this will make the journey a lot harder for many.

A heartfelt congratulations from another union brother here. Well done and enjoy your retirement.
Mine is still going strong for me.

 

[powerplay]

Congratulations! You've done very well and $1 million dollars is a big something. Enjoy your well earned retirement!

 

[bolt]

I applaud your position, however having seen many state and federal, along with state sanctioned employee pensions modified after implementation, I'd explore a sanctioned settlement. I've also seen HCare options affiliated w/these pensions down graded. In one case Bluecross & Blueshield turned into the states medicaid option.You probably do not need the resources but, I've seen MBTA, MTA, Police/Fire & State workers pensions modified after implementation in the NewEngland area.

The NEngland Stevedores pension fund disappeared entirely* an odd 50+yrs back. Things are different these days than they were only 25 yrs ago, but I always consider what if's.
The pensions responsible parties also disappeared overseas for over 7yrs(avoiding prosecution), after which they were not prosecuted.


You recognize unions becoming weak as you OP.
A well worn adage used to be "A country, or union, is only as solvent as its capitals liquidity ".

Good luck & Best wishes though.