tangomonster
Full time employment: Posting here.
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2006
- Messages
- 757
I think this board is great and am now delurking after six months of enjoying the wisdom, humor, and humanity!
I'm not usually comfortable calling attention to or talking about myself. It's so much more interesting to hear about others. Was never one of those "look at me, mommy!" kids.
But I really need to talk about our situation and ask for advice.
DH and I are both 52, no kids. Have always had in mind that we would retire early and to that end, have lived frugally and invested. We never had a specific age in mind---thought maybe 57, but now 5 more years seems too long....
Although we have a lot of education, haven't been real successful careerwise. Combined, we've never earned more than $80,000. (Combination of not the most astute college major choices and lacking emotional intelligence/ interpersonal skills that could help us advance at work.)
At this point, we're just tired, physically and emotionally---of getting up 5:30 a.m. every morning, commuting an hour or more each way in heavy traffic, reporting to incompetent bosses, and stress (DH works in a customer service call center; I work with disabled people giving career advice).
Because we aren't interested in expensive trappings (love to cook at home, only eat out once a week in an inexpensive ethnic restaurant, live in a $125K condo that's all paid for, happy driving older cars, etc., liking to just stay home and read), our expenses are about $30,000 a year
(not including taxes or medical insurance). We estimate taxes would be about $12,000 if we retired.
I'm proud to say that we just reached a milestone----
4 million net worth! (includes the 125K condo). It's in about 55% mutual funds like from Fidelity and Vanguard; the rest is in tax-free muni bonds. Currently we get about 54K in tax-exempt income and about 22K in taxable income. (There can also be another 20K in capital gains, but this can vary).
Pensions won't kick in until 55 and 65 and aren't even worth talking about---a few hundred dollars each. Would probably start SS at 62.
No way would we need to withdraw 4% a year---wouldn't know what to do with 160K a year! (We've agreed to not travel and just stay around home until Medicare kicks in).
As I said, expenses of about $30,000 and taxes of about $12,000.
So---you may be thinking this is a no-brainer. The catch is (what else?) health insurance. I qualified for a BCBS high deductible policy of about $120 a month (doesn't do much for me until I get 10K of expenses. But DH, although actually in good health, has some medical conditions that on paper don't look good and caused him to be rejected.
Supposedly with HIPAA, his current employer-sponsored health insurance can be converted to a somewhat similar policy if he leaves. It would cost a little under $700 a month.
So health insurance costs would be 1,000 a month---and then we would paying out of pocket for my occasional doctor visits. With the 30K of living expenses, 12 of taxes, and 12 of health insurance, we're now up to 54K. Probably still doable. But if health insurance premiums double about every five years, we may be paying 4,000 a month in ten years and have about three years to go until Medicare starts (if it's even around in 13 years!)
So--- plaese give us your input. Are we crazy to think about this? Crazy not to think about it? keep in mind that we don't need to preserve our principle to give to heirs (we will leave it to charities, but we come first). But we don't want to run out of money before we depart this world!
Thanks! I trust you all much more than a financial advisor!
I'm not usually comfortable calling attention to or talking about myself. It's so much more interesting to hear about others. Was never one of those "look at me, mommy!" kids.
But I really need to talk about our situation and ask for advice.
DH and I are both 52, no kids. Have always had in mind that we would retire early and to that end, have lived frugally and invested. We never had a specific age in mind---thought maybe 57, but now 5 more years seems too long....
Although we have a lot of education, haven't been real successful careerwise. Combined, we've never earned more than $80,000. (Combination of not the most astute college major choices and lacking emotional intelligence/ interpersonal skills that could help us advance at work.)
At this point, we're just tired, physically and emotionally---of getting up 5:30 a.m. every morning, commuting an hour or more each way in heavy traffic, reporting to incompetent bosses, and stress (DH works in a customer service call center; I work with disabled people giving career advice).
Because we aren't interested in expensive trappings (love to cook at home, only eat out once a week in an inexpensive ethnic restaurant, live in a $125K condo that's all paid for, happy driving older cars, etc., liking to just stay home and read), our expenses are about $30,000 a year
(not including taxes or medical insurance). We estimate taxes would be about $12,000 if we retired.
I'm proud to say that we just reached a milestone----
4 million net worth! (includes the 125K condo). It's in about 55% mutual funds like from Fidelity and Vanguard; the rest is in tax-free muni bonds. Currently we get about 54K in tax-exempt income and about 22K in taxable income. (There can also be another 20K in capital gains, but this can vary).
Pensions won't kick in until 55 and 65 and aren't even worth talking about---a few hundred dollars each. Would probably start SS at 62.
No way would we need to withdraw 4% a year---wouldn't know what to do with 160K a year! (We've agreed to not travel and just stay around home until Medicare kicks in).
As I said, expenses of about $30,000 and taxes of about $12,000.
So---you may be thinking this is a no-brainer. The catch is (what else?) health insurance. I qualified for a BCBS high deductible policy of about $120 a month (doesn't do much for me until I get 10K of expenses. But DH, although actually in good health, has some medical conditions that on paper don't look good and caused him to be rejected.
Supposedly with HIPAA, his current employer-sponsored health insurance can be converted to a somewhat similar policy if he leaves. It would cost a little under $700 a month.
So health insurance costs would be 1,000 a month---and then we would paying out of pocket for my occasional doctor visits. With the 30K of living expenses, 12 of taxes, and 12 of health insurance, we're now up to 54K. Probably still doable. But if health insurance premiums double about every five years, we may be paying 4,000 a month in ten years and have about three years to go until Medicare starts (if it's even around in 13 years!)
So--- plaese give us your input. Are we crazy to think about this? Crazy not to think about it? keep in mind that we don't need to preserve our principle to give to heirs (we will leave it to charities, but we come first). But we don't want to run out of money before we depart this world!
Thanks! I trust you all much more than a financial advisor!