Share Your FIRE Milestones - 2021

[Gumby]

We are starting new versions of our long running threads so that they will load faster on phones. Here is the link to Share Your FIRE Milestones 2013 - 2020. https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/share-your-fire-milestones-65754.html

 

[anothercog]

Not a milestone per se, but when I ran Firecalc today it now shows one year less of working until RE. Happy New Year!

 

[Andre1969]

Not a milestone per se, but when I ran Firecalc today it now shows one year less of working until RE. Happy New Year!

Oh, good point...that completely slipped my mind. I need to re-run my calculations.

As for milestones, I hit a somewhat minor one. I hit the $2.2M mark for investible assets on December 28. I think I slipped back below it on 12/29, but was definitely above on the 30th and 31st. So, I can close out 2020 on a high note!

 

[Calgary_Girl]

Happy New Year everyone! Here’s to a better 2021! Can’t complain financially because our NW has hit an all-time high at $3.4 million. DH will retire on Jan. 1/26 at 56 or sooner

 

[Calgary_Girl]

Oh, good point...that completely slipped my mind. I need to re-run my calculations.



As for milestones, I hit a somewhat minor one. I hit the $2.2M mark for investible assets on December 28. I think I slipped back below it on 12/29, but was definitely above on the 30th and 31st. So, I can close out 2020 on a high note!

Nice job!

 

[Jeffman52]

1.45 M as we ended 2020. It was a good year in returns on investments. One year and a few months is my plan to say enough and get off the hamster wheel. Wife is finally coming around to this plan.

 

[RxMan]

We were able to reach 1.55 million not including our paid off home for the end of 2020. Not sure what our timeframe for retirement will be but I’m excited that 2020 ended up being a good year. I’m thinking 7 years of work to go but we could make it work in 5 years if the markets are kind. We’ll see but 2020 was a step in the right direction financially.

 

[Andre1969]

Thanks, Calgary Girl, and congratulations to everyone else on these new milestones!

I'm just thankful we still have a place where we can talk about such things. Don't get me wrong; I do feel compassion for people who are struggling right now. But, it seems like it's getting to the point that talking about any sort of good fortune these days is something akin to trying to show off your brand-new Cadillac in 1934!

My investible assets had flirted with the $2M mark back in early 2020, and I was toying with the idea of going ahead and retiring. But, I'm starting to fall into the "One More Year" syndrome. In retrospect, I'm starting to think I could have retired in late 2018.

I bought a new house that September, and probably couldn't have done it if I was retired, because I wouldn't have qualified for the mortgage. But I probably could have retired right after that. We did have that little end-of-year correction in 2018, that knocked my investible assets down about about 18%, peak-to-trough. I have a feeling I would not have weathered that well, seeing my values plummet the moment after I retired. But, it recovered quickly, and I was about even again by the end of April, 2019.

During the COVID crash, I lost about 35% from my Feb 19 peak to the Mar 23 trough. But again, it was a fairly quick recovery. I got most of it back by July, and in August I popped $2M again.

Still, with these uncertain times, I'm a bit leery about pulling the plug. But, call it selective memory, or whatever. It seems like remembering how quickly things can go south always sticks in my mind. But, my mind tends to forget how quickly things tend to recover.

I guess the one consolation is, the longer I wait to retire, the less likely I am to fail at it. Also, with the whole COVID thing, and working from home, it almost feels like the best of both worlds. I'm stuck in limbo a bit...where it's not quite retirement, but it's not quite the typical work grind, either. So for the time being, it just seems like easy money rolling in.

 

[Out of Steam]

Set up my first Roth IRA conversion, a monthly transfer, this morning.

Left money on the table in 2020 by not transferring to get to the top of the 12% tax bracket. Decided not to let it happen again. Should be able to do it for 2021 and 2022.

 

[rjsob58]

I retired in 2017, though I didn't need to withdraw from IRAs that year. Just finished running my numbers for 2020 year end. Just looking at my IRAs, even after 3 full years of withdrawals, my total portfolio is 22.9% higher than it was when I retired. I'm a bit surprised.

I doubt that trend can continue but based on the spreadsheets I made up prior to retirement, I'm way, way ahead of where I thought I'd be.

Maybe it's the frugal pessimist in me, but I haven't been able to splurge much. I have 2 kids in college that will graduate next spring. At that point I can sell what was our primary residence and be debt free. I think at that point, if I'm still ahead of my original projections, I will fund my 7 grandkids college funds and then consider my "job" done. Hopefully then I can splurge on DW and myself.

 

[jasg]

3M in investible assets after starting retirement eleven years ago with 1M.

 

[street]

^ outstanding!

 

[tb001]

We hit 99% on FIRECalc last week. Started at 92%, so nice to see a bit more wiggle room!

 

[moneymaker]

Army officer here.

Hit $750k in investments this week.

Most of that in retirement accounts though.

Have another roughly $650k in real estate equity.

Pretty happy with our success.

Cheers!

 

[cyber888]

Hit 1.3 M NW today. Market broke all records.

 

[TrophyHusband]

I just looked at one of my first posts, Oct 2016, which was when we hit $2M NW. A little over 4 years later and we're in the neighborhood of $4.6M NW of which $3.6M is in investible assets.

It's funny to see how goals and strategies change even over a relatively short period of 4 years. At the time my FIRE number ($2.3M) was almost half of what it is now ($5M). Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

I just looked at one of my first posts, Oct 2016, which was when we hit $2M NW. A little over 4 years later and we're in the neighborhood of $4.6M NW of which $3.6M is in investible assets.

It's funny to see how goals and strategies change even over a relatively short period of 4 years. At the time my FIRE number ($2.3M) was almost half of what it is now ($5M). Has anyone else experienced this?

I've definitely experienced "goal creep", which IMO is a good thing. It comes from the LBYM mindset, as when I started planning decades ago I felt confident that I could probably retire on $1M, spending $30-40K/year, but as we kept saving and hit $2M and then $3M, I realized that we could afford to retire earlier, and travel more, and so I added $2K/month for travel, and $1K/month for dining out/ordering in, and we're still well over 110 on Fidelity's retirement planner.

At the same time, I ran out of work last year, and we cut back our spending, and I found that while I might need to scale back my retirement dreams (I had started wondering if we could possibly afford vacation homes and/or boats), I realized we could still do most or all of what we planned even if I don't go back to work.

But yesterday I basically got an offer to go back to a lot of what I was doing before, and it would be nice to work 3-4 more years, be able to afford those "stretch goals", and then see if I want to retire, go part-time, or become a contractor instead of an employee.

Anyway, I noticed that it hurt a little to think that our stretch goals might be out of reach, but that was mostly tempered by remembering that our regular plan was still a LOT better than I thought I'd be able to do when I was younger.

 

[freedomatlast]

Buy and hold no-matter-what strategy has continued to work well through 2020. NW increased to 5.9M and IA to 5.2M. My original goal was to cut the cord at IA of 3.0M and waited till the nut reached 3.8M to do it for a little added cushion. With two mini pensions and two future SS checks and a small rental income, Firecalc says we're good to spend $217,000 annually at 100%, but most years we spend 50 -60k. Gonna have to try to step that up in 2021.

 

[Cassius King]

Well, I'll play the role of the "little guy". But as of close yesterday, my investments are now over $500k.
It truly is a snowball. The first $100k was the hardest!

I'm not a C-Suite Exec or high income earner. Just LBYM and save 35% to 50% of my income. Ready for the next $500k.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

Well, I'll play the role of the "little guy". But as of close yesterday, my investments are now over $500k.
It truly is a snowball. The first $100k was the hardest!

I'm not a C-Suite Exec or high income earner. Just LBYM and save 35% to 50% of my income. Ready for the next $500k.

Good for you! I passed the 500K mark recently and it certainly snowballs. We can look forward to accelerating gains now.

 

[Morgan22]

We hit our number last year. (100% success in FIRECalc.) Was going to put in my notice, but then COVID hit. Now we have an extra two years of expenses available plus small pension and SS. I'm thinking of giving notice later this year when last kid graduates college.

 

[Dtail]

We hit our number last year. (100% success in FIRECalc.) Was going to put in my notice, but then COVID hit. Now we have an extra two years of expenses available plus small pension and SS. I'm thinking of giving notice later this year when last kid graduates college.

If you were ready last year and now are in even better shape, why wait?

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

If you were ready last year and now are in even better shape, why wait?

Not OP! I'm similar. I planned for Summer 2020 and a year ago from today was super excited. 2020 took the wind out of my sails... my LWN now is 22% higher now but my optimism has been shattered. I used to mostly read the threads about life after FIRE and now I'm back to overthinking do I have enough (bouncing around a 2.5% WRD overall but also accessibility issues with a majority in deferred accounts).



I'm not pessimistic but just don't know what to expect (easy come easy go). I index invest (and discount cashflow when I choose individual securities) but still know that I am ultimately buying equity in individual companies as an owner and just feel things are "frothy" now... if we keep printing money and the vaccine reopens shuttered sectors of the economy maybe I'm ok.. or maybe not. I just don't know and piled on top of that is many of the things I want to do when free from the chains of employment are impacted by COVID. So, I take it one day at a time trying (not that successfully) to maintain my sanity... then I feel so lonely to be in such a "good" position but to be feeling constant anxiety when there are so many more that are suffering (some good friends and several I know who have lost almost everything) when I am wishy-washy on quitting my job with much more money than I had a year ago. Wordy I know, a bit of stream of consciousness.


There needs to be an ER therapist that understands our unique population but all the qualified ones are retired!!!


FLSunFire (Grateful to have such "problems" to deal with)

 

[tb001]

We just officially hit 100% in firecalc. Coincidentally when we cleared a major “0” milestone.

 

[jollystomper]

Well, I'll play the role of the "little guy". But as of close yesterday, my investments are now over $500k.
It truly is a snowball. The first $100k was the hardest!

I'm not a C-Suite Exec or high income earner. Just LBYM and save 35% to 50% of my income. Ready for the next $500k.

Good for you! I passed the 500K mark recently and it certainly snowballs. We can look forward to accelerating gains now.

Remember that all of us here started out as "little guys". Congratulations, you are well on your way to bigger and better things!