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There are two separate issues when it comes to airline milage programs: 1. Status with the airline: The higher your status, the more you are likely to be helped when things go wrong. I have a friend who has a very high status with United (Chairman's circle which is even above Global Services)...

Jonathan Clements had a very relevant article about this topic on his website, The Humble Dollar: https://humbledollar.com/2024/03/comfort-has-a-cost/

We are staying put here in northern NJ. It certainly costs more to live here than other parts of the country but the additional expense is negligible considering our net worth. I like our neighborhood and medical facilities are excellent with three large hospitals in the area. Other factors: we...

OP: We are in a somewhat similar situation in my household. I am retired but my wife is still working. We have a considerable amount in our tax deferred accounts - over $3.5M. However, we can't start Roth conversions until my wife (eventually) decides to retire as we are currently in a high tax...

It's a lot more than it was pre-Covid for sure but not totally outrageous. Due to the closure of Russian airspace, flights have been taking a longer route. A few benchmarks: Last year we flew on Emirates to Asia and paid about $6k for business class tickets. This year, we are flying business...

Exactly - its my experience also that 60 days in advance is about the sweet spot for fares.

It's important not to book too early because many airlines only have placeholder fares more than about three months in advance. These serve the purpose of keeping the flights in the schedule and they don't really expect anyone to book those fares.

It's exactly three years since I retired - Its been great for me too. My wife is still working so we haven't had to dip into retirement funds at all, in fact we are still accumulating. I thoroughly enjoy being retired while my wife enjoys her work - and all is well :-)

I have used the Fidelity retirement calculator and Pralana Gold. Both of these are very good retirement calculators since they take taxes into account. We actually have more in our taxable accounts than our tax deferred accounts. It was very useful for doing what-if scenario explorations. That...

This is a good way to keep track of the various forms of net worth and closely matches my own approach. The one thing that I don't include in our financial NW is the lump sum for our pensions (wife's and mine) as I don't want to include it until it's actually in hand which won't happen until we...

We live in northeastern NJ fairly close to NY City - close enough that I can see the tips of skyscrapers. House was originally constructed in the late 1950s but we have completely renovated it from top to bottom over the 27 years we have lived in it. Size is about 3000 sq ft. Mortage: 0...

This is an interesting topic. Here is our current situation: - Wife commutes to work a few days a week in her hybrid Camry. It’s very economical and comfortable. - I am retired and don’t drive much, typically less than 100 miles a week. I have a new Honda CR-V which serves my needs perfectly...

1M about 2010 2M about 2012 3M about 2014 My wife and I both had a very non-linear salary curves we really started making good money about 12 years ago, relatively late in our careers. I retired happily at the end of 2020 but my wife is still working as she enjoys her work.

I spent most of my twenties in grad school working on my PhD in computer science so I got a very late start compared to my friends. However, on the up side, I managed to stay employed without a break for the next 29 years. Even by the early 1990s, it was becoming clear that pensions were on...

I was able to retire at 58 a few years ago with no pension at all. My wife is still working but only because she really enjoys her work a lot - she won't get a pension either. I started working in the early 1990s and my wife started working a few years later. We accumulated our savings in the...

I just booked two business class round trip tickets for my wife and myself on Emirates from the NY area to Asia for $5200 each. Definitely among the most expensive tickets I've bought. But for a 24 hour journey door to door, the extra comfort makes it more than worthwhile. If you haven't...

My wife and I are both immigrants from Asia and paying for college is one of the few topics where our views seem to differ substantially from those of native born Americans. In our extended family, it is simply expected that it is the duty of parents to fully pay for kids college without any...

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the most valuable source of information about college: the forums on College Confidential: https://www.collegeconfidential.com A lot of people here have offered well-meaning but mostly irrelevant advice. When it comes to very practical information about...

This is really the wrong forum to ask questions about fatFIRE. I would suggest checking out this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/

As I catch up with this thread, I am just beginning to realize how much of an outlier I am �� The whole point of retirement me is to be able to spend more time actually programming. While I was working, as a senior engineer, I kept getting pulled into systems design. I have just...

I'm recently retired after a thirty year career in tech. I spend a few hours every day reading papers, writing code and generally exploring pure math. I am also fascinated by electronics and spend a lot of time breadboarding circuits. This is such a fascinating field, there is an endless amount...

Last year, I discovered that we had saved about 50x our living expenses including a very generous padding for extras. That was enough for me and I retired. I am really enjoying retirement now. My wife on the other hand, is still nervous about our level of savings (mind you, we are in the top...

I never hit an IPO jackpot but did get lucky in the choice of my field. I had a choice between parallel computing, coding theory and machine learning. I had the good fortune to pick machine learning for my PhD at a time when the field was just getting started. It was close call :) However...

I worked in machine learning related development in the NY City area until I retired at the end of last year. I was being paid several hundred thousand as base salary and this was not in an FAANG. It was mostly luck that I started working in machine learning thirty years ago. It was a sleepy...

Your numbers are almost identical to mine. In fact, our respective situations are so eerily similar that I had to wonder if I had a doppelgänger :-) In any case, I just retired last month and so can you! My wife is still working and we get our health insurance through her for the time being...