Another new poster

[Jeffman52]

Hi all,
I found this site quite by accident but have found myself on here quite a bit just reading all the info.

I am 53. DW is 54. Kids are both out of college and off on their own. We have no dept outside of the house itself and its more than half paid for on a 10 year note, that we are 4 years into. We have about 700K in pension and 401K right now. Both are putting 20% of our salaries away toward retirement. Both working at a megacorp and looking forward to the day when we can walk away from working in corporate America.

We have our sites set on that 1 Mil mark (maybe just a little over for cushion) and then I think we are going to dump the jobs and retire. We believe we will hit that in 5 to 6 years. Then we sell our house, buy something smaller, pocket the difference and live the quiet life. LOL

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

Hi all,
I found this site quite by accident but have found myself on here quite a bit just reading all the info.

I am 53. DW is 54. Kids are both out of college and off on their own. We have no dept outside of the house itself and its more than half paid for on a 10 year note, that we are 4 years into. We have about 700K in pension and 401K right now. Both are putting 20% of our salaries away toward retirement. Both working at a megacorp and looking forward to the day when we can walk away from working in corporate America.

We have our sites set on that 1 Mil mark (maybe just a little over for cushion) and then I think we are going to dump the jobs and retire. We believe we will hit that in 5 to 6 years. Then we sell our house, buy something smaller, pocket the difference and live the quiet life. LOL

Nice plan, i like it. welcome to this awesome forum

 

[2017ish]

Welcome, Jeffman52.

The post-kids-college years have been amazing for us in [-]turbo[/-]super-charging savings. You are correct in seeing the advantages of that.

Do you have pensions or the like from megacorps? Or, is your spending sufficiently low that 1,000,000 is enough for your needs? Or, are you in one of the VHCOL areas that enable you to sell house and retire like a king in flyover country? (Me, I'm in flyover land and we are finally retiring next month at 57/56)

 

[Jeffman52]

Welcome, Jeffman52.

The post-kids-college years have been amazing for us in [-]turbo[/-]super-charging savings. You are correct in seeing the advantages of that.

Do you have pensions or the like from megacorps? Or, is your spending sufficiently low that 1,000,000 is enough for your needs? Or, are you in one of the VHCOL areas that enable you to sell house and retire like a king in flyover country? (Me, I'm in flyover land and we are finally retiring next month at 57/56)

Thanks for the welcome! We both have pensions from the megacorps. They don't offer them any more, but we are grandfathered in. But also we both have decent jobs (between the two of us we gross a bit over 200k) in an area of the country with a VLCOL. Not having debt or kids college has really helped. But frankly we both got a late start in saving properly and getting out of debt so we could keep more of our hard earned money.

I was previously married and the divorce was horrible financially. Then 8 years ago, when I got re-married, we both had debt and almost no retirement savings. So we started closely budgeting, attacking our debt, and then really working on saving for the future.
Like many here we live quite well, and happily, way below our means.

 

[MBAustin]

Welcome Jeffman! If you haven't found them already, we have a helpful list of things to think about in preparation for retirement:

Some Important Questions to Answer

Have you run any retirement calculators such as FIREcalc (link at bottom of each page of the forum)? This helps a lot in figuring out what your savings target should be.

Glad to have you on board!

 

[evilanne]

You are on the right path. Much depends on how much you need to live on. Medical expenses seems to be big challenge for many. I found when I excluded retirement savings and employment taxes that I could easily manage with pension income. Paid off the house was a big advantage but many are able to retire with a mortgageis depending on their post retirement income/assets. Good luck.

 

[Jeffman52]

Ran the FireCalc tool and as always it depends on spending. If I keep it around 65K per year, I am 100%. But if I go up even by 5K then I drop into the 80's.

I also ran SS in, drawing at 62 and drawing at 67. And in both scenarios the percent of pass stays the same. If the Stock market is really good and we can sock away a couple hundred thousand more.... then it really loosens things up financially.

MBAustin, the important questions to answer link was outstanding!!

 

[Nodak]

Welcome aboard