Our First Year of Retirement!

[Teacher Terry]

Since my divorce I consider myself lean fire too. When I hit 15 years retired my col yearly raises are 5% a year. I still have went to Europe twice in the past 3 years and am going twice this year to visit my son in Kansas.

Like you I drive an old dependable car. I drive so little now that it doesn’t matter and if I ever do need another car it will definitely be a Toyota Corolla. I can’t believe a 16 year old car has never needed anything but brakes. This is my first Toyota.

 

[Koolau]

Since my divorce I consider myself lean fire too. When I hit 15 years retired my col yearly raises are 5% a year. I still have went to Europe twice in the past 3 years and am going twice this year to visit my son in Kansas.

Like you I drive an old dependable car. I drive so little now that it doesn’t matter and if I ever do need another car it will definitely be a Toyota Corolla. I can’t believe a 16 year old car has never needed anything but brakes. This is my first Toyota.

Slight thread drift: I peruse the yearly "car" issue of Consumer reports and always like to check out the section on reliability of used cars. IIRC they go back maybe 9 years or so. The reliability results are highlighted in colors (yellow for average, red for below average and green for above average.) I always know when I'm on the page with mostly Toyota models because it's virtually all green.

Returning you now...

 

[Sunset]

Wow...... You really are LEAN !
That explains some of your earlier posts.

I certainly experienced not knowing what day it was, so I bought a $15 watch.. like this:
casio watch

 

[BruinBones]

Thanks for sharing your retirement story. I particularly like your reasoning for taking Social Security at 62 or 63 (ie., allowing your portfolio to grow for your heirs). My wife and I are in a similar position to do so.

 

[Exchme]

You are almost completely dependent on your wife's pension. Is it inflation adjusted and have 100% survivor benefits? If not, I would be a bit worried.

Check out opensocialsecurity.com as the best source for understanding the optimum ages for SS benefit claiming. Make sure you scroll to near the bottom and click on different points on the graph and it will show you the present value difference vs. its optimization and what the annual benefits would be.

It's going to tell you that should claim at 62 and your wife should wait until 70. But not only is the difference between her claiming at 62 vs 70 not too large, it's actually worse if she waits until 64 vs 62 (after that it starts to get better again). The reason for the odd behavior is you can't get spousal benefits until she claims.

The assumed strategy the program is using is that you are spending down your bonds/CDs while you wait, not your stocks. The idea being that having more guaranteed SS income allows you to take larger risks with the remaining money.

Congrats on retirement and hope that all continues to go well.

 

[healthyandfun]

Thanks for sharing your story and strategies. When people sometimes think of early retirement, they think one needs a mountain of cash stashed away. Your story will show others that there are various ways to get there.

 

[mountainsoft]

Like you I drive an old dependable car. I drive so little now that it doesn’t matter and if I ever do need another car it will definitely be a Toyota Corolla. I can’t believe a 16 year old car has never needed anything but brakes. This is my first Toyota.

We both drive VW Jetta's. Mine is a 2000 and my wife's is a 2004 (Our daughter has a 2003). We use my car most of the time now and I fill up about once or twice a month. My wife just got gas last week, the first time she filled up since February!

Overall our cars are fairly reliable and don't require much maintenance. Naturally, everything seems to fail at once when they do need repairs.

 

[mountainsoft]

Wow...... You really are LEAN !
That explains some of your earlier posts.

I certainly experienced not knowing what day it was, so I bought a $15 watch.. like this:
casio watch

Yep, I have a couple of $10 Casio watches myself, and a cheap Timex watch I use as my "work" watch. The display is hard to read on that one, but I don't care if it gets dirty or scratched up.

 

[mountainsoft]

You are almost completely dependent on your wife's pension. Is it inflation adjusted and have 100% survivor benefits? If not, I would be a bit worried.

Check out opensocialsecurity.com as the best source for understanding the optimum ages for SS benefit claiming. Make sure you scroll to near the bottom and click on different points on the graph and it will show you the present value difference vs. its optimization and what the annual benefits would be.

It's going to tell you that should claim at 62 and your wife should wait until 70. But not only is the difference between her claiming at 62 vs 70 not too large, it's actually worse if she waits until 64 vs 62 (after that it starts to get better again). The reason for the odd behavior is you can't get spousal benefits until she claims.

The assumed strategy the program is using is that you are spending down your bonds/CDs while you wait, not your stocks. The idea being that having more guaranteed SS income allows you to take larger risks with the remaining money.

Congrats on retirement and hope that all continues to go well.

Yep, my wife's pension is 100% survivor and inflation adjusted.

I download our social security statements, and use a variety of tools to calculate the outcomes of different SS filing ages. I always deduct 30% from the estimates in case SS isn't fixed. In our case, both of us filing at 62 or 63 usually results in the best outcomes overall. Yeah, filing later gives higher SS payments, but it means spending down more of our savings.

I'm not planning on spousal benefits even though they will probably be slightly higher than my own benefits. I tend to err on the conservative side with my estimates.

 

[ugeauxgirl]

Glad you're enjoying yourselves! If you CARE about forgetting the day of the week (I did it too at first) having a set activity one day of the week fixed it for me. I volunteer on Tues so I have to plan around that, and it helps me remember.