FI and planning to retire in 2014

[butterfly]

Hi

DH and I are planning to retire in early 2014. We will be 41 and 37 with two small children aged 3 and 6.

We have been planning for this from the beginning of our marriage 14 years ago and it's very exciting to be able to almost taste the freedom.

We will have around 1.5M in invested shares that will pay dividends and we may also purchase another home with this as we will sell our current one.

We also have another real estate investment that pays around 8k per month that we own outright.

It's scary as we have so many years left and two children to support. we are giving up large incomes from our own business, but we would prefer to now focus on investing time with each other. We may start another business later on with no staff that can be operated location independently.

We plan on travelling for 1-2 years before making any big decisions about where we may settle. We may not come back to Australia or we may choose another country, or many countries.

At this stage we just need to decompress from our working lives and enjoy each other. Once our headspace has settled we will make decisions based on who we are then, rather than who we are now.

I have been reading these forums for a while but have now just signed up and feel comfortable with posting.

 

[omni550]

Welcome aboard, butterfly!

Sounds like you're doing great and are soon to be off on some great new adventures.

omni

 

[supernova72]

I like the sounds of a real estate investment that pays $8K a month and your nice nest sized nest egg. Congrats!!

 

[Nomad4hire]

Welcome and congratulations! ! --Nomad

 

[obgyn65]

+1.

Welcome and congratulations! ! --Nomad

 

[butterfly]

Thanks everyone.
These boards are great and I am learning so much from everyone.

 

[aida2003]

Welcome and contratrs on your FI. Will you sell your business or will it operate by itself and send you 'dividends' your way?

Great success

 

[butterfly]

Welcome and contratrs on your FI. Will you sell your business or will it operate by itself and send you 'dividends' your way?

Great success

We wanted to keep it but finding staff to manage it has been proving extremely difficult. To say the least!

So we will be putting it on the market and selling it, if it doesn't sell we will keep it. We would earn a lot more per month by keeping it than selling it and investing the profit, but we really want to distance ourselves from the stress.

Thankyou for your welcome.

 

[meekie]

Welcome and congratulations! It does seem scary having such a long time horizon, but having owned your own business, you probably have a lot of skills and resources to start another business if needed as a plan B.
DH and I are close to your age, but need a few more years of savings before we retire. We plan to dabble in areas that might make us some money, but more as a hobby or part-time business.

 

[Beryl]

Congrats and welcome. It sounds like you have a terrific future ahead of you!!! FI at such a young age must be nice.

 

[sailor]

Congratulations!
I'm curious - what kind of business it is and do you know why you did have a hard time to find right staff?

 

[knucklehead 61]

great job building assets!
can you tell us about the 8k / mo real estate?

 

[Van-Guard23]

Congratulations! Having younger kids and a longer time horizon, being as young as you are, can give one pause...but if you've done your due diligence and ran your scenarios thru various Retirement calculators and feel fairly comfortable about your "chances" for a successful retirement, then go for it. As someone else posted, there is always a Plan B with your business, if Plan B is needed down the road...although I hope not.

 

[seraphim]

How secure is your real estate investment; is that pretax income; what are your estimated expenses; college funds for kids; health insurance/care cost; and you plan to cash in part or all of your investments for another house and lose the income potential?

These would be my personal concerns.

Welcome to the group