Hi, ER! Looking for Wisdom on this ER journey

mydogwantsmetoretire

Confused about dryer sheets
Joined
Jul 11, 2015
Messages
6
I am excited to join this Forum and learn from so many others. I am 52-years-old married with two teenagers. After 30 years in corporate America, Fortune 100, Big 4 Accounting, and a large tax consulting firm, I am ready to switch. Not sure what retirement will look like but would like more freedom and flexibility to pursue interests where income, while appreciated is not the main driver for my future pursuits. Guess this is kind of a definition of "early retirement."

I think my first step is get my hands on some good calculators that will allow to play with multiple variables, e.g., retirement age, income, spending levels, to see the chances of success in the future. If anyone knows of any forum groups or threads, please let me know

Any other advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Welcome!
The first tool to use is FireCalc, you enter your spending, income, SS, portfolio and it runs it through historical simulations to give you a feel for whether you can retire and the wide range of outcomes depending on the luck of your retirement date.

For optimizing SS claim dates, check out opensocialsecurity.com and scroll all the way to the bottom and click on various points on the graph that show you the outcome of different claim ages.

Folks have different preferences for calculators, but the most full featured and powerful is Pralana at pralanaretirementcalculator.com, I've read posts by professional advisors that use it as it's better than the typical tools advisors use. Pralana has both an Excel sheet and a newly released Online version that has a little more flexibility.

As for forums, you've come to the right place. Another great forum when you have deep questions about money is bogleheads.org. They restrict content over pretty much to money-only, but there are insurance professionals, folks that do the back-room work at mutual funds, and other pros that hang out there in addition to just lots of educated amateurs.
 
If you have a Fidelity account, definitely use the free retirement income planner on their site. It will give you a 30,000 foot view on whether you have enough to retire and will calculate your investable assets on a yearly basis for the rest of your life with three financial market scenarios. It will show RMD estimates, but not show many specifics such as estimated taxes.
 
Welcome to the Forum! Lots of great info here, and many folks who are willing to help. Firecalc is a great place to start, make sure you click through all of the tabs.
Under the Forums section, there is FAQs and a thread titled >
Great questions to ask/answer.

If you are comfortable posting numbers, many knowledgeable folks with give you some great answers.
 
Welcome to the forum. I too recommend the use of FIRECalc.

All the best.
 
Welcome Back- Mydogwantsmetoretire,

Two references that many have found helpful with their retirement planning process are Frequently Asked Questions (noted by Pacergal above) and FireCalc.

MarieIG
 
I am excited to join this Forum and learn from so many others. I am 52-years-old married with two teenagers. After 30 years in corporate America, Fortune 100, Big 4 Accounting, and a large tax consulting firm, I am ready to switch. Not sure what retirement will look like but would like more freedom and flexibility to pursue interests where income, while appreciated is not the main driver for my future pursuits. Guess this is kind of a definition of "early retirement."
Your observations got me thinking (happens slowly, but eventually...). Age 52 is decidedly "early" for retirement purposes, in the conventional narrative. Even so, by then one has likely spent, as you note, 30 years as a full-time career employee. That's 30 years! And yet, if we follow the conventional rubric, society expects for us to spend yet another decade working.

Whether we love our careers, or hate them; whether we're salivating at the concept of retirement (pun intended) or dreading it... we still have spent those 30 years... and yet, the conventional narrative says, that that's not enough.

Bit of a quandary, is it not?
 
Your observations got me thinking (happens slowly, but eventually...). Age 52 is decidedly "early" for retirement purposes, in the conventional narrative. Even so, by then one has likely spent, as you note, 30 years as a full-time career employee. That's 30 years! And yet, if we follow the conventional rubric, society expects for us to spend yet another decade working.

Whether we love our careers, or hate them; whether we're salivating at the concept of retirement (pun intended) or dreading it... we still have spent those 30 years... and yet, the conventional narrative says, that that's not enough.

Bit of a quandary, is it not?
No. Who cares what society "expects." Retired at 54, now 65. wouldn't trade the time for any amount of money.
 
No quandary at all - you have one life, live it as you see fit.Plus , you are talking about a transition to some lighter version of work it sound like. All good.

Welcome to the Forum. Lot's of good people here who are happy to chime in.
There are several posts on calculators. Firecalc is good, Pralana was way too much for me to deal with when I was crunching numbers. I used the extended I-orp for years, but I think it is gone.I also used the Ultimate Retirement Calculator and The Flexible Retirement Planner , which I liked a lot.
 
Welcome. One thing you will realize, which you probably already know, is that tax management plays a significant roll in retirement financial planning. Given your stated background, you’re one big step ahead in the knowledge you’ll need to get comfortable with retirement. While you may not have worked on some of the tax issues that come up, your background knowledge will do you well as you fold in the retirement issues.

There are straightforward things like managing your income in order to pay the least amount of capital gains and later to know whether or not you’ll be subject to extra payments for Medicare based on income (IRMAA). And, there are more complex things depending on your situation - best level of Roth conversion comes to mind.

As mentioned, start with FireCalc. The process of entering all the information and running various scenarios is very helpful in getting comfortable with retiring.
 
Tools like FIRECalc or c FIRE are very useful for playing with different scenarios and variables.
 
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