I've been lurking for some time now. My husband and I are not in a similar comfortable financial position as most of you who planned to retire early, but I think we will be OK anyway. The last few years have been stressful as my husband has gone from full-time employment as an SAP programmer to part-time working from home due to a disability and as of today no longer working. I have come here often to get ideas and to just calm myself down. Thank you to all who have helped without even knowing it.
I have done some tracking of our expenses. We live in a low cost area (just a few miles south of Uncle Mick ). I work part-time as a travel agent for a few $$, I'll start receiving early social security in September and my husband will receive some small pension payments monthly. We have some cash set aside as well as some small IRAs and most of our assets are in his 401k. Unfortunately, we still have a mortgage for about 8 years. He won't be eligible for social security for another 2 years. We will be investigating some things related to his disability, including a private disability policy, but I think we can still make it if none of those things come about. His healthcare is taken care of and I will have COBRA for 18 months. That will leave me 16 months shy of Medicare, but worse case scenario, our state has a high risk pool.
At one time, I had a Series 6 and a Series 7 license, but was an assistant, never in sales or financial planning. Until the recent recession, I thought I had a fair handle on the accumulation process. Now it is just scary, but one of the things I picked up here is to keep enough in cash to last a while. I find I really don't know very much about the distribution process, but will be careful about taxation issues on both social security and IRAs.
So, hi to all and if you have any tips or suggestions, I'm all ears.
I have done some tracking of our expenses. We live in a low cost area (just a few miles south of Uncle Mick ). I work part-time as a travel agent for a few $$, I'll start receiving early social security in September and my husband will receive some small pension payments monthly. We have some cash set aside as well as some small IRAs and most of our assets are in his 401k. Unfortunately, we still have a mortgage for about 8 years. He won't be eligible for social security for another 2 years. We will be investigating some things related to his disability, including a private disability policy, but I think we can still make it if none of those things come about. His healthcare is taken care of and I will have COBRA for 18 months. That will leave me 16 months shy of Medicare, but worse case scenario, our state has a high risk pool.
At one time, I had a Series 6 and a Series 7 license, but was an assistant, never in sales or financial planning. Until the recent recession, I thought I had a fair handle on the accumulation process. Now it is just scary, but one of the things I picked up here is to keep enough in cash to last a while. I find I really don't know very much about the distribution process, but will be careful about taxation issues on both social security and IRAs.
So, hi to all and if you have any tips or suggestions, I'm all ears.