Funny how I found this forum

I retired at 58 almost six years ago. Life has been good!

Welcome to the forum.
 
Welcome to the forum. I turned 56 twenty years ago and retired a few months later. This forum has been with me providing a helping hand the whole time.
 
I think 56 is great! Do IT! I am feeling too young to retire at 46 but hope to this next year!
 
I found this forum when I was looking at how much of a buffer over expenses was reasonable to retiree. That was 5.5 years ago. I retired at 54.
 
Made me look at my 1st post 13 years ago. We were planning our hiatus to Mexico @ age 41...we stayed a total of 3 years before back to the states. I forgot how young I was... We enjoyed the time away but returned to the grind in 2015. Lots of ways to "do it". I'm in year 7 of my coast time, monetizing my hobby (self employed).
 
Welcome to the forum. It is a great place to learn and share your retirement journey.
I found it when looking for retirement calculators.

Work on the information links shared by MarieIG, you will learn a lot about your personal readiness to retire.
Feel free to post questions here if you wish, many folks will share their knowledge.
 
I found this forum from the City Data retirement forum. Someone there mentioned the Early retirement forum. (Mathjak I believe…) and I immediately took a look and so glad I did! I retired at 59 (two whole weeks ago…!!😃😃) welcome
Interesting. My journey is similar. Started on City Data, but got dismayed that their retirement forum is almost exclusively about issues affecting senior citizens... and at the time, I was a full generation younger. Meanwhile, their financial forum is dominated by speculation... not buy-and-hold for eventual retirement.

That led me to Bogleheads, which is fantastic specifically for investment discussions, but says little about early retirement, and in particular, about the psychology of retirement. Somebody on BH recommended the current forum.

Here, my hope was to discuss more about the psychology of being a pre-retiree, of working vs. retirement, and of frugal living. Lots of illuminating chats and advice, but most folks are of a particular mindset. Not just here, but everywhere, the prevailing view, is that our choices in life are limited mainly by money. Once the money appears, our choices broaden, and we should take the most palatable one, if money allows. But this omits due deference to anxiety, envy, self-questioning, apprehension, need for belonging, compulsion and so on. These are dicey and contentious!

Eventually one realizes something obvious: if one's dilemma is relatively common, there will be useful examples and anchors for discussion. If one's case is rare and pathological, then neither convivial discussion, not routes to resolution, are forthcoming.
 
Retired for a few years before I found this site. What this site has done for us has been tremendous. Because of this site, we left Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and now we DIY. We have paid about $200K in management fees between Fidelity (early on) and then Merrill Lynch. We love having full control of our funds, sell when we need money, without needing to ask FA to send us money.
Wowza, in loco parentis, eh?
 
Wow! I only received two email about replies to my post. So, thanks for all the posts and for also sharing how you found the Forum. Interesting, ain't it? 😉

I want to reply/follow up on many of the comments you provided here. But I know I have to be cautious and start a new thread if it starts to get sideways or too detailed. So, even if I do not follow up on all the replies I want to let you know that I really appreciate the feedback. It is desperately needed.
 
Wowza, in loco parentis, eh?
Asking our FA to send us money was the most annoying aspect of having ML manage our funds. I don't think they did a bad job with asset allocation etc, but now just with a keyboard, we can sell and buy whatever we want. For instance, this morning, I finally got rid of all the bonds (legacy from ML days) from my son's account. I also manage his account for him now.
 
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Welcome to the forum. You're in friendly area for 56 year old retirement. I retired 3 years earlier at 53. If the numbers say you're good, then jump into retirement.

My numbers look good in Excel but there is always doubt with me overthinking. I need someone with actual experience with Financial Planning to convincingly tell me it looks good.

I met with a CFP a few months ago but obviously not being a customer it was not detailed or useful. It was more of what they may do for me and the % fee. I will be meeting with others in the next couple of months.

When I met with the CFP, I explained that I am ok on the financial planning, budgeting and investing both at work and outside work. What I think I need is more of tax planning assistance.

Knock on wood I have been significantly beating the market with my investments. I do options and covered calls on leveraged ETF with cash I have aside that is not yet included in the retirement numbers. I also use High-Yield accounts to park cash.
 
[...] Because of this site, we left Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and now we DIY. We have paid about $200K in management fees [...].

This is my debacle as I mentioned in my previous post. When I met with a Financial Advisor I asked what will I get for the fee that I will be paying for passive investment service. So I asked, we meet for the first time, and you tell me what? He said people need to understand they should get paid for services and I asked him to provide an example. That was an interesting conversation. I think I have a good handle on investments. We have no debts, no mortgage on the house, will have a pension income and access to my Traditional and Roth IRA. We are very frugal with our pension covering approximately 85-90% of expenses.

When I mentioned how I handle my investments, he was sincere and said they do not do that. I think I need an FA to help me with taxes and convince me that the numbers support retirement plans. Is the normal 1% yearly fee still worth that?
 
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The only reason retiring at 57 is a bad idea is if at 57 you have insufficient assets/unearned income to cover your expenses if or your entire identity is wrapped up in your professional career with nothing to retire to. Applies to all ages.

My Exel file calculates that I can cover ~85-90% of my expenses until 62 y/o if I start taking SS, which is the plan I looking at. Not that I will need it but I ran a breakeven calculation and it is hard to justify waiting past 62.

I can also exercise the option of withdrawing cask from my retirement account to cover the remainder 10-15% as needed if my passive stock investment comes up short.
 
I found this forum in a totally unrelated way-- someone on a ladies scrapbooking forum recommended it.
 
I believe I was looking for early retirement info on google and found this site. What a wealth of knowledge. I retired at 59, about 4 years ago. We never run out of things to do and try. I highly recommend it, if you can make the numbers work...
 
RS, I'd wager that if you can manage your own investments, you can manage your taxes. Or you could hire an advisor on an hourly basis. IMO, it would be a waste of money to pay a percentage of assets annually for a tax plan. I've always figured if you know the basics and apply those, even if not applied optimally, you can get 90% of the benefit. And the main part is to spread out income from now until "plan sunset" :)
 
When I mentioned how I handle my investments, he was sincere and said they do not do that. I think I need an FA to help me with taxes and convince me that the numbers support retirement plans. Is the normal 1% yearly fee still worth that?
No, it's not worth it. But what I'm finding - partially as a result of this forum, partially from other considerations - is that what one might need, is some combination of tax accountant and maybe attorney. The investment-side of financial life is easily handled, if one is patient and amenable to passive style, such as the Boglehead 3-fund portfolio. Investing is the easy part! Handling other financial matters, is less amenable to passive approach... and maybe that's where professional advice is more appropriate.

One might think that the bigger brokerage houses such as Fidelity or Vanguard would offer an all-in-one tax/legal service to their "top" clients, but that is evidently not the case. Thus we need to be searching for something else.
 
Retired at age 54 almost twenty years ago, no regrets whatsoever. This forum has been a great resource for about any question you could fathom, as well as some you couldn't.
 
Welcome! I can't even post all the good advice I've received here. Saved $$$ in areas of accounting, investing, healthcare, insurance, travel...the list goes on. No pressure, mostly opinion and experience. I can guarantee, OP you will learn something new or relate to another's experience.
 
This is my debacle as I mentioned in my previous post. When I met with a Financial Advisor I asked what will I get for the fee that I will be paying for passive investment service. So I asked, we meet for the first time, and you tell me what? He said people need to understand they should get paid for services and I asked him to provide an example. That was an interesting conversation. I think I have a good handle on investments. We have no debts, no mortgage on the house, will have a pension income and access to my Traditional and Roth IRA. We are very frugal with our pension covering approximately 85-90% of expenses.

When I mentioned how I handle my investments, he was sincere and said they do not do that. I think I need an FA to help me with taxes and convince me that the numbers support retirement plans. Is the normal 1% yearly fee still worth that?
No, a 1% yearly fee is not a good thing.
You can do what's needed yourself.
There's a bit of a learning curve but you don't need to know absolutely everything about every possible investment detail...
 
Could have retired @55 but went out @57 14 years ago due to a medical scare. Work was geat retirement is better.
 
I retired at 58, I would have liked to keep on a while longer, but due to some health issues I felt like I wasn't keeping up with the younger workers. At least I avoided that covid mess at work, I am sure that was a nightmare.

Mine was a case of going out being envied instead of pitied.
 
Welcome to the Forum.
Many of us say this is the best little corner of the internet. As you can tell, there are many friendly, helpful people on here that would be happy to help or answer as much as you feel comfortable sharing or asking about. The DW(Dear Wife) and I will both be retired next year @54.
 
Welcome to the forum, this is a great place to learn about finances and just chat about life, the universe and everything.

An advisor puts a hole in your pocket that you need the same way you need a hole in the head. Remember, the safe-ish withdrawal rate is about 4% (maybe less for an early retiree), if the advisor takes 1%, you have to live on 3%. They absolutely have no secret sauce for beating the market - if they did, they would be phoning in their trades from their yacht, not dealing with you.

Before claiming SS at 62, you should think about the need for ACA premium credits and the need for Roth Conversions. Since the SS benefit is adjusted upward each year while you wait, creating some low income years may be very lucrative for you. Also, while I gather you are single, if that's not right and you are married, the larger earner's benefit continues after the first spouse passes, so it almost always better for the higher earner to wait until age 70.
 
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