VaCollector
Full time employment: Posting here.
- Joined
- May 12, 2007
- Messages
- 549
Wow! I'm impressed at how young some of you guys were when you started thinking about ER! When I was 48, I read a book from the library by Charles Schwab "You're 50--Now what?" It motivated me to add up all the money DH and I had saved until then. We both had retirement accounts, but never put too much into them. We were so clueless we never even did anything with them, just invested in some stock mutual funds and forgot about them for 25 years... We changed jobs a lot, but always left the money alone in the various 401(k),403(b), and 457 plans. We didn't think there was enough money in those accounts to bother with.
Well, lucky for us that was the correct strategy and we ended up with a lot more money than I thought we'd have.
Then, when I was 49, my Mom died and left us money we used to pay off our mortgage. At age 51, we learned that DH was vested in AK PERS, tier one (from a bunch of summers working in AK) which would provide fully covered health insurance and drug coverage starting at age 50. We still didn't think we'd be able to RE, but then I discovered this forum.
Well, to cut the story short, I'm retiring at the end of the year (at age 52), and DH is retiring at the end of Feb, 2008 (at age 51).
Thank you, ER Forum!
Very nice story and CONGRATULATIONS!!