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Share Your FIRE Milestones - 2021
Old 01-01-2021, 06:21 AM   #1
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Share Your FIRE Milestones - 2021

We are starting new versions of our long running threads so that they will load faster on phones. Here is the link to Share Your FIRE Milestones 2013 - 2020. https://www.early-retirement.org/for...nes-65754.html
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Old 01-01-2021, 05:15 PM   #2
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Not a milestone per se, but when I ran Firecalc today it now shows one year less of working until RE. Happy New Year!
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Old 01-02-2021, 01:55 PM   #3
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Not a milestone per se, but when I ran Firecalc today it now shows one year less of working until RE. Happy New Year!
Oh, good point...that completely slipped my mind. I need to re-run my calculations.

As for milestones, I hit a somewhat minor one. I hit the $2.2M mark for investible assets on December 28. I think I slipped back below it on 12/29, but was definitely above on the 30th and 31st. So, I can close out 2020 on a high note!
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Old 01-02-2021, 04:08 PM   #4
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Happy New Year everyone! Here’s to a better 2021! Can’t complain financially because our NW has hit an all-time high at $3.4 million. DH will retire on Jan. 1/26 at 56 or sooner 🤞🏻
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Old 01-02-2021, 04:09 PM   #5
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Oh, good point...that completely slipped my mind. I need to re-run my calculations.



As for milestones, I hit a somewhat minor one. I hit the $2.2M mark for investible assets on December 28. I think I slipped back below it on 12/29, but was definitely above on the 30th and 31st. So, I can close out 2020 on a high note!

Nice job!
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Old 01-03-2021, 09:35 AM   #6
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1.45 M as we ended 2020. It was a good year in returns on investments. One year and a few months is my plan to say enough and get off the hamster wheel. Wife is finally coming around to this plan.
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Old 01-03-2021, 11:06 AM   #7
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We were able to reach 1.55 million not including our paid off home for the end of 2020. Not sure what our timeframe for retirement will be but I’m excited that 2020 ended up being a good year. I’m thinking 7 years of work to go but we could make it work in 5 years if the markets are kind. We’ll see but 2020 was a step in the right direction financially.
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Old 01-03-2021, 12:31 PM   #8
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Thanks, Calgary Girl, and congratulations to everyone else on these new milestones!

I'm just thankful we still have a place where we can talk about such things. Don't get me wrong; I do feel compassion for people who are struggling right now. But, it seems like it's getting to the point that talking about any sort of good fortune these days is something akin to trying to show off your brand-new Cadillac in 1934!

My investible assets had flirted with the $2M mark back in early 2020, and I was toying with the idea of going ahead and retiring. But, I'm starting to fall into the "One More Year" syndrome. In retrospect, I'm starting to think I could have retired in late 2018.

I bought a new house that September, and probably couldn't have done it if I was retired, because I wouldn't have qualified for the mortgage. But I probably could have retired right after that. We did have that little end-of-year correction in 2018, that knocked my investible assets down about about 18%, peak-to-trough. I have a feeling I would not have weathered that well, seeing my values plummet the moment after I retired. But, it recovered quickly, and I was about even again by the end of April, 2019.

During the COVID crash, I lost about 35% from my Feb 19 peak to the Mar 23 trough. But again, it was a fairly quick recovery. I got most of it back by July, and in August I popped $2M again.

Still, with these uncertain times, I'm a bit leery about pulling the plug. But, call it selective memory, or whatever. It seems like remembering how quickly things can go south always sticks in my mind. But, my mind tends to forget how quickly things tend to recover.

I guess the one consolation is, the longer I wait to retire, the less likely I am to fail at it. Also, with the whole COVID thing, and working from home, it almost feels like the best of both worlds. I'm stuck in limbo a bit...where it's not quite retirement, but it's not quite the typical work grind, either. So for the time being, it just seems like easy money rolling in.
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Old 01-04-2021, 06:21 AM   #9
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Set up my first Roth IRA conversion, a monthly transfer, this morning.

Left money on the table in 2020 by not transferring to get to the top of the 12% tax bracket. Decided not to let it happen again. Should be able to do it for 2021 and 2022.
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Old 01-06-2021, 07:04 AM   #10
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I retired in 2017, though I didn't need to withdraw from IRAs that year. Just finished running my numbers for 2020 year end. Just looking at my IRAs, even after 3 full years of withdrawals, my total portfolio is 22.9% higher than it was when I retired. I'm a bit surprised.

I doubt that trend can continue but based on the spreadsheets I made up prior to retirement, I'm way, way ahead of where I thought I'd be.

Maybe it's the frugal pessimist in me, but I haven't been able to splurge much. I have 2 kids in college that will graduate next spring. At that point I can sell what was our primary residence and be debt free. I think at that point, if I'm still ahead of my original projections, I will fund my 7 grandkids college funds and then consider my "job" done. Hopefully then I can splurge on DW and myself.
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Old 01-06-2021, 07:34 AM   #11
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3M in investible assets after starting retirement eleven years ago with 1M.
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Old 01-06-2021, 07:44 AM   #12
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^ outstanding!
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Old 01-06-2021, 11:38 AM   #13
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We hit 99% on FIRECalc last week. Started at 92%, so nice to see a bit more wiggle room!
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Old 01-07-2021, 06:00 PM   #14
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Army officer here.

Hit $750k in investments this week.

Most of that in retirement accounts though.

Have another roughly $650k in real estate equity.

Pretty happy with our success.

Cheers!
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Old 01-07-2021, 08:45 PM   #15
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Hit 1.3 M NW today. Market broke all records.
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Old 01-09-2021, 07:54 AM   #16
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I just looked at one of my first posts, Oct 2016, which was when we hit $2M NW. A little over 4 years later and we're in the neighborhood of $4.6M NW of which $3.6M is in investible assets.

It's funny to see how goals and strategies change even over a relatively short period of 4 years. At the time my FIRE number ($2.3M) was almost half of what it is now ($5M). Has anyone else experienced this?
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Old 01-09-2021, 09:26 AM   #17
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I just looked at one of my first posts, Oct 2016, which was when we hit $2M NW. A little over 4 years later and we're in the neighborhood of $4.6M NW of which $3.6M is in investible assets.

It's funny to see how goals and strategies change even over a relatively short period of 4 years. At the time my FIRE number ($2.3M) was almost half of what it is now ($5M). Has anyone else experienced this?
I've definitely experienced "goal creep", which IMO is a good thing. It comes from the LBYM mindset, as when I started planning decades ago I felt confident that I could probably retire on $1M, spending $30-40K/year, but as we kept saving and hit $2M and then $3M, I realized that we could afford to retire earlier, and travel more, and so I added $2K/month for travel, and $1K/month for dining out/ordering in, and we're still well over 110 on Fidelity's retirement planner.

At the same time, I ran out of work last year, and we cut back our spending, and I found that while I might need to scale back my retirement dreams (I had started wondering if we could possibly afford vacation homes and/or boats), I realized we could still do most or all of what we planned even if I don't go back to work.

But yesterday I basically got an offer to go back to a lot of what I was doing before, and it would be nice to work 3-4 more years, be able to afford those "stretch goals", and then see if I want to retire, go part-time, or become a contractor instead of an employee.

Anyway, I noticed that it hurt a little to think that our stretch goals might be out of reach, but that was mostly tempered by remembering that our regular plan was still a LOT better than I thought I'd be able to do when I was younger.
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Old 01-09-2021, 10:38 AM   #18
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Buy and hold no-matter-what strategy has continued to work well through 2020. NW increased to 5.9M and IA to 5.2M. My original goal was to cut the cord at IA of 3.0M and waited till the nut reached 3.8M to do it for a little added cushion. With two mini pensions and two future SS checks and a small rental income, Firecalc says we're good to spend $217,000 annually at 100%, but most years we spend 50 -60k. Gonna have to try to step that up in 2021.
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Old 01-09-2021, 11:00 AM   #19
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Well, I'll play the role of the "little guy". But as of close yesterday, my investments are now over $500k.
It truly is a snowball. The first $100k was the hardest!

I'm not a C-Suite Exec or high income earner. Just LBYM and save 35% to 50% of my income. Ready for the next $500k.
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Old 01-09-2021, 11:01 AM   #20
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Well, I'll play the role of the "little guy". But as of close yesterday, my investments are now over $500k.
It truly is a snowball. The first $100k was the hardest!

I'm not a C-Suite Exec or high income earner. Just LBYM and save 35% to 50% of my income. Ready for the next $500k.
Good for you! I passed the 500K mark recently and it certainly snowballs. We can look forward to accelerating gains now.
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