T-Minus
Recycles dryer sheets
Greetings, fellow "personal CFO's"! After all, isn't the financial analysis we're each performing of similar complexity and importance to that a CFO would undertake for a small business? Since I'm a new posting member here, I thought I should stop in and introduce myself. I'm in my early 50's, and have been mostly following the low E.R. (Expense Ratio, not Early Retirement) philosophy espoused on the Bogleheads site for the past 25 or so years (more so over the past decade+). Somewhere around 2002, I switched from a "get rich quick" game plan (tech startup, high-risk investments, etc.), to a "get rich slowly" plan (solid position, investing 35% pre-tax income in low-expense index funds). Along the way, we've paid off our house, eliminated all debt, and managed to accumulate ~20X my annual salary in savings and investments, or between 27X-33X of our projected living expenses. Which leads me to why I finally joined.
I've been lurking and reading various threads here for quite a few years now, but this thread by Senator finally got me to create a profile and become official:
http://www.early-retirement.org/for...-it-comes-to-planner-success-rates-72813.html
You see, I've run just about every tool available out there, and spent literally hundreds of hours pouring over the results. I've used the Fidelity Retirement Income Planner, FIRECalc, the Otar Retirement Calculator, the Bogleheads Variable Percentage Withdrawal spreadsheet, as well as several Excel spreadsheets of my own creation. And all of them, under all assumption methods, tell me I'm either 95% or 100% assured of successfully funding my retirement throughout my wife and my lifetime (assuming a lifespan of 97 years). But, because of life experience and my overly cautious nature, I'm not sure I can believe the results generated by these various tools. So, I continue to work, save, plan and defer.
About two months ago, I came to the realization that I'm either "there" or pretty darn close, and that has really taken a lot of stress off me at work. Not that I don't like my job - I do...a lot. But there had always been a fair amount of related pressure associated with the fact that I am the primary household breadwinner. Now, with that burden removed, the balance of power at work has slightly shifted. Enough so that, when a recent rumor that an early retirement package was making the rounds at work, I pinged my management chain with a request for more details where normally, I would have been worrying "what if they don't hit their target" and "am I next on the chopping block". Apparently, that must have triggered some reaction because, just yesterday, I was asked if I would consider stepping into a higher position (where I won't have to travel as much for extended periods).
But that doesn't answer the next question: "If I retire, what will I do next?" You see, I've literally thrown 100% into my work the past few decades, while most of my hobbies have withered and died on the vine. I used to ski, play tennis, mountain bike, fly fish, go to concerts, read (recreational, not work-related) etc. but most of these have gone away. If I were to retire today, I would most certainly be bored. So, for the next 2-5 years before I actually retire, I've set a personal goal to re-introduce more work-life balance in my life and become active again in some of my previous hobbies. And it turns out that my management is supportive of this!
So, back to the real point of why I am here. I'm here to learn from like-minded people who either have walked or are walking a similar path. I'm here to understand holes in my assumptions and to discover what Donald Rumsfeld described as "unknown unknowns." So, hello to all of you. I hope I can begin to give back as much as I've already gotten from both the contributions here as well as the FIRECalc tool.
I've been lurking and reading various threads here for quite a few years now, but this thread by Senator finally got me to create a profile and become official:
http://www.early-retirement.org/for...-it-comes-to-planner-success-rates-72813.html
You see, I've run just about every tool available out there, and spent literally hundreds of hours pouring over the results. I've used the Fidelity Retirement Income Planner, FIRECalc, the Otar Retirement Calculator, the Bogleheads Variable Percentage Withdrawal spreadsheet, as well as several Excel spreadsheets of my own creation. And all of them, under all assumption methods, tell me I'm either 95% or 100% assured of successfully funding my retirement throughout my wife and my lifetime (assuming a lifespan of 97 years). But, because of life experience and my overly cautious nature, I'm not sure I can believe the results generated by these various tools. So, I continue to work, save, plan and defer.
About two months ago, I came to the realization that I'm either "there" or pretty darn close, and that has really taken a lot of stress off me at work. Not that I don't like my job - I do...a lot. But there had always been a fair amount of related pressure associated with the fact that I am the primary household breadwinner. Now, with that burden removed, the balance of power at work has slightly shifted. Enough so that, when a recent rumor that an early retirement package was making the rounds at work, I pinged my management chain with a request for more details where normally, I would have been worrying "what if they don't hit their target" and "am I next on the chopping block". Apparently, that must have triggered some reaction because, just yesterday, I was asked if I would consider stepping into a higher position (where I won't have to travel as much for extended periods).
But that doesn't answer the next question: "If I retire, what will I do next?" You see, I've literally thrown 100% into my work the past few decades, while most of my hobbies have withered and died on the vine. I used to ski, play tennis, mountain bike, fly fish, go to concerts, read (recreational, not work-related) etc. but most of these have gone away. If I were to retire today, I would most certainly be bored. So, for the next 2-5 years before I actually retire, I've set a personal goal to re-introduce more work-life balance in my life and become active again in some of my previous hobbies. And it turns out that my management is supportive of this!
So, back to the real point of why I am here. I'm here to learn from like-minded people who either have walked or are walking a similar path. I'm here to understand holes in my assumptions and to discover what Donald Rumsfeld described as "unknown unknowns." So, hello to all of you. I hope I can begin to give back as much as I've already gotten from both the contributions here as well as the FIRECalc tool.