I think my 455 burned gas just sitting there... But gas was only ~30 to 40 cents a gallon in those days... I don't recall the size of the gas tank but it probably could have been classified as a fuel storage facility or used as part of the strategic reserve. (well maybe not that big)Hah. My 66 Bonneville had a 389 four barrel. I could actually get almost 17 mpg until I stepped on it and opened up the 2 extra barrels. Then I made frequent stops at the gas station.
I think my 455 burned gas just sitting there... But gas was only ~30 to 40 cents a gallon in those days... I don't recall the size of the gas tank but it probably could have been classified as a fuel storage facility.
I think that had the biggest CI engine in any car I ever had... (Not even close on HP though) I had a couple of 454's over the years too... All were real gas hogs.
I used the $100K and a 1% difference to have a simple example in my previous post. In my first example in this thread, I used a $300K mortgage, 6% difference between low fixed rate mortgage and investing in TIPS and I bonds. The difference currently could easily be $18K, which can then be invested each year to make even more money. Even at $500 average for 30 years, that is $15K, plus the investment income on the $15K.
We have a current thread on saving money on buy nothing groups, freecycle sites, deals at Dollar Tree and Dunkin Donuts, so it seems like a lot of posters here would be pretty happy with an extra $1K or $500 a year, and thrilled with the $18K or even more on the mortgage differential.
This is also how I look at it. The math supports keeping a mortgage if the interest rate is low enough that investment returns are likely to exceed interest costs. For me, the extra liquidity gives me peace of mind, whereas for others, they’d rather have no debt than an extra pile of cash.
For those of you with a lot of equity but still carry a mortgage (for investment purposes), did you ever think of doing a cash out refinance and have even more money to invest?
Seems logical to me if you have a million dollar house and a $400,000 mortgage and you're confident you're going to make money, you'd want to mortgage to the max and make even more money.
Of course, now days rates are bad so too late for that for a while.
I found the article mildly interesting - sort of peeking in the windows of the neighbors to see how they live. Having said that, the article didn't provide enough information to really compare experiences. Nor did the article really give much info to folks not yet retired. Clearly, if you have a couple of mil and high 5 figure pension/ss income, you can make it. Big surprise.
The parts about what to do all day were, again, kinda interesting, but not particularly applicable to most folks IMHO. More to the point, most folks find something to do in retirement. That's important to know, I guess. YMMV
Depends where you live and what you're doing for health insurance. We just started COBRA which comes to just under 2K/month so that's 24K/yr right there. Add 8K for property taxes. Food, other insurances, gas, travel, entertainment, home and auto maintenance, taxes, etc. and it's not hard at all to get over 100K. I'm estimating our need to be 130K/year.
Reading stuff like this makes me wonder how I can manage to be retired We must be poor... But appear to be in the SIRE crowd.
According to my SS statement, I have only made $1.2M since I started pumping gas at 15 years old.
For non savers I would say a paid off house is essential.
For non savers I would say a paid off house is essential. I have a friend who has refi multiple times and owes less than 200k on her 2 million dollar house. BUT despite being a CPA ( divorced and SAHM for most of her earning years) she has very little saved.
Her and current DH are not high earners. Probably will only have SS unless they sell their home. ( which I don’t see happening for various reasons). Their early to mid 50’s.
A paid off home would probably help their situation. Not happening. She has lived there 22 years. I feel for them, even though their home far outshines mine.