Hubs retired 10 yrs ago @ 62, I retired 2 yrs ago@ 56. His early ss is 1850, I annuitized a small pension 970/mo & have 50/50 former employer healthcare for 600/mo. I'm 6 years away from Medicare so that'll be nice to have. We've carried no debt for over 15 yrs, have 10+yo but well maintained Sonata/Jeep & hubs is handy. We (luckily) sold old house high after renting it out 5 yrs, while upgrading to newer better (2 suites) house for when Mom's perm & not just a snow bird move-in.
We put solar on the roof for the tax saving on a cap gain when there were subsidies and the roi breakpoint was 2 or 3 years ago, so only pay for gas & water + taxes/ins 3.5 k. Banking and putting the profit from our house sale 100k into Ally CDs (with rolling dates) frees up cash twice a year. So far, we've not used much of that at all (maybe 12k over the past 2.5 yrs.). The balance of those CDs is still close to 100k.
Our taxable income (we did withdraw about 12k from a healthy 40k money market account) was ZERO last year. I couldn't believe it. I think our standard deduction was 25.5k & the # was under that. That was a first- in the past we’ve always owed a bit.
We've taken two 8-10 days trips and 2 or 3 smaller (instate/ adjacent state) trips- all to hike except 1 to see my stepson/DIL & Grandkids (they came this way at Christmas). I create and sell jewelry & lots of stuff on EBAY (love it). That brought in about 5k or so last year. Out of my Paypal fun money I fund most of my holiday expenditures (with a few exceptions) as well as my charitable contributions sending the rest to the bank to spend or keep.
We live simply but eat very well (I like to cook), and both have hobbies, do pretty much everything we want to- it just isn’t costly. We’re not the jet set- we’re the old Chevrolet set, as it were. We each have very active individual (girlfriends/ guy friends & clubs) and our shared couple’s friends who we see frequently. We eat out when we want to but try to not go overboard since most restaurant food isn’t as healthy as we’d like it to be. We don’t drink at all anymore, and I’ve enjoyed such better health since stopping that and w*rk- my gray hair even made its own low-lights as my hair magically became ash blonde. All on its own. Stress can do a body in, I’ve come to believe.
Once DH gets through a health set-back, we are planning a fairly long trip to the UT parks we have not been to already (another state checked off). If hiking appears to be too ambitious for him we’ll do something else pretty big- maybe our planned trip to WA state/ Western Canada + maybe Alaska as well. At 59.5yo mid-2020 I can take penalty free distributions from my IRA (500k) and will fund some pretty pricy excursions out of that- specifically the ones that are high on Hub’s list of must see list. With our big age diff (13 yrs.), I can’t make timeline assumptions- esp. in view of his upcoming radiation therapy. Not that I’m wishing him to exit but I’m very cognizant of time passing at an astonishing rate. I’ll fund as many big yearly trips as are physically possible over the immediate coming years.