You Dreamers what is your number

[Dash man]

I had a goal of $3M by age 55. Reached it four years ago at age 56. I retired, but DW didn't want to retire until last year. Our NW nearly tripled in that time. It's allowing us to help family a lot more than we would have been able to.

 

[YVRRocketSurgery]

For me my number has always been about monthly cash flow, so it isn't a specific number, but a return monthly that matters.

I agree that when it comes down to brass tacks, it's really about after tax cash flow. But the other side of the equation is how one generates that cash flow.
--
To state the obvious, we can talk about lump sums for fun but the more interesting part is how everyone is deriving their target cashflows from their target capital assets IMO.

Anyways, my numbers:
Target of $2M-$2.5M in investable assets to in part support an after tax cash flow of $75k-$90k/yr with the missus' numbers are separate from mine due to her DB pension.

 

[rayinpenn]

7-5/8. Oh, you mean assets? Well, I did retire just recently at 61 - have a bit over $3M.

Is it liquid and what is your home address?

 

[Totoro]

I'm single no dependents and my friends think I'm crazy for planning to live on that amount. I think $50K is plenty and they think $70K isn't nearly enough. It's crazy how different people can be.

I'd need some serious adjusting upwards to get to 50k, I'm well below 30k and not really wanting for anything. That's including rent.

I would like to learn how to fly an airplane (+20k one time, +5k ongoing), be able to live part-time in NZ (+10k ongoing) and have some +10k - +20k play money a year (travel, gadgets), so I could get it up there. Doing all that wouldn't increase my quality of life that much though.

Different strokes and such ..

 

[T-Minus]

T-Minus, I like your number! Congrats.

Thank you, Bryan. My wife and I were just out to dinner last night discussing how our lives are going to change in just a couple short months. It doesn't seem real - forty years of continuous work (16 to 56 with no break) coming to an end. 68 and counting...

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

I have no dependents so it is just me. I gross about 30k off my investments right now and it seems to be plenty for me. To be honest I never thought I could live on 30k, but then I never tried doing it for a full year until now. It is much easier than I thought it would be. But I live frugally and I anticipate my annual gross income will go up as I put money back into the market. I am 30% stocks right now and my goal is to get up to maybe 35 % to 40% stock exposure in the next 3-5 years as I am only 47 and I will need long term growth. Yes, i do live in the middle of Utah and its relatively cheap to live here. But there is a reason for that as I am at least 100 miles from any city with a population over 10,000 in any direction.

 

[dvalley]

I follow in Fermion and Andre1969 footsteps closely and somewhat nash031 here too even though I have a kiddo. My current target age is 51-52 and my number is $1.5M with a paid off house. However, I can prob make due with $1.2M and a paid off house. My house in CA has enough equity that I can buy a house in a LCOLA (out of state or even the boonies in CA) outright so that part is somewhat done. However, dollar wise I'm only at around $520k with about 9-10 yrs till my target age.

 

[cyber888]

Im 53 now. Hoping to retire around 56 with $800K - $850K with house fully paid and zero debt. We have no kids or grandkids, no pets, and live in the South where living cost is cheaper. If I work till 57.5 yrs old, I could have $1 million saved, house paid, and zero debt. We'll see

 

[Fermion]

As a side note for retiring with less, I just finished up federal taxes for our first real retirement year.

$0. Well actually they owe us $5,400 for ACA but we took it during the year. I didn't take quite enough so I applied the $26 refund toward 2017 taxes.

 

[ugeauxgirl]

We're 45 and 53. Our number is 2 mil and we hit it a month ago (yay!) that's a 3% wr as we have been spending less than 60K a year (excluding taxes) My husband will continue to work awhile longer- at least part time. I'm hanging it up in a year. We've been buying our own insurance for years- a little worried about that- but I'll go back to work if I have to. Our kids are 12 and 8 and we're hoping the increase in our health insurance will be offset (for a while) by the reduction in kid expenses!

 

[Vagabond2020]

I plan on taking a sabbatical March 20th 2020, for 12 months. Should have ~$500-600k invested by then.

I will go back to work, in a more limited capacity till I eventually retire with ~$1M in investments.

I will be 32 when the sabbatical happens. It's amazing what a 50-70% savings rate can do over a few short years.

 

[Breedlove]

Looking today at investments 1.2 m Everything paid off . Social security around 3400. mo . for both of us . Plans call for us to live on between 5k and 6K per mo. Our biggest cost monthly will be medical . We will be meeting with our financial planner and accountant this month . We always get strong tips.

 

[street]

Some great plans and that is also some of the excitement that goes along when that day comes.

 

[Cassius King]

No number I'm shooting for. I plan on retiring as soon as the mortgage is paid off. It's on the books for another 10 years, but I know I can pay it off sooner. Once that's done. I'll live off whatever investments I have.
Like has been said before, I don't know how much time I have, so I'm going by a date and not a number. Market returns can dictate that number, I know my age in 10 years.

 

[Markola]

I plan on taking a sabbatical March 20th 2020, for 12 months.

+1. Fully Firing is too big of a decision for us to make now so DW and I plan to do a dress rehearsal and take a year off from work to slow travel around the world. The plan is to quit 4 years from now when some stars align at both of our workplaces, allowing us both to step away on good terms. We ought to have about $2 million by then if present trends continue and, even if not, we should have plenty to take a gap year that we are excited about. I'm not worried that I won't find w*rk in my field when we come back, if we come back .

 

[RISP]

I'm currently shooting for 1 Million € in investments, and a paid of home. At least that's the plan for now - I'm still more than a decade away from anything close to this. I could do with less, but I like round numbers. If I get close to FI and absolutely hate my job, I will re-assess.

 

[surf n turf]

Our plan is 1.2 million and a paid off house and we're currently on track to accomplish ER by age 52/49 which is 9 years away.

 

[rayinpenn]

I appreciate that setting a goal can be critical but I'm not so sure anymore. There was a time when I thought a million dollars was the bees knees. So if you follow the 4% rule that's $40k a year plus social security. So I'll assume that's another 2 grand a month so we are at 64k a year. Roughly 5 grand a month but what is your healthcare insurance going to cost? Could it be 2 grand? Or more? No one can say for sure. Retirement planning wasn't ever easy but I think given the HC situation we are in a particularly tuff time.

I think it is better to just save as much as you can, avoid the toys and live simply. That doesn't mean pb and j every night but it may mean you forgo the $4 dollar moka something or other. We didn't have a target but did adopt a LBYM lifestyle.

 

[simple girl]

We too have been affected by the rising health insurance premiums and max out of pocket limits going up.

In the fall of 2016, when I looked at plans on the market place, the best I could do for premiums + max OOP was $19,680/yr.

I just looked at plans again...the one I looked at in the fall is no longer available; they apparently pulled out of our market. Now the best I can find is $23,032/yr.

We are at the point now of realizing we are going to have to take the leap and hope we don't hit the max OOP regularly and also hope rates stop their ridiculous climb. If we don't take that chance, we may never retire early due to the goal posts continually being moved out due to healthcare.

Our contingency plan is accepting the fact that healthcare costs may require us to go back to work.

We've decided we don't want to "go home with an idol in our pocket" (Survivor reference). Serious health scare in our life has made us more willing to take risks....I think...hopefully we will stop the "OMY due to health insurance unknown" issue next year.

 

[MichaelB]

We too have been affected by the rising health insurance premiums and max out of pocket limits going up.

In the fall of 2016, when I looked at plans on the market place, the best I could do for premiums + max OOP was $19,680/yr.

I just looked at plans again...the one I looked at in the fall is no longer available; they apparently pulled out of our market. Now the best I can find is $23,032/yr.

We are at the point now of realizing we are going to have to take the leap and hope we don't hit the max OOP regularly and also hope rates stop their ridiculous climb. If we don't take that chance, we may never retire early due to the goal posts continually being moved out due to healthcare.

Our contingency plan is accepting the fact that healthcare costs may require us to go back to work.

We've decided we don't want to "go home with an idol in our pocket" (Survivor reference). Serious health scare in our life has made us more willing to take risks....I think...hopefully we will stop the "OMY due to health insurance unknown" issue next year.

SG, I know exactly what you mean and share your frustration with costs. I remember looking at an 8% increase and thinking "whew, it could have been so much worse". That's crazy.

I have found that Medicare costs are much more stable, so hopefully you'll find a way to bridge 'til then.

 

[Dawg52]

We too have been affected by the rising health insurance premiums and max out of pocket limits going up.

In the fall of 2016, when I looked at plans on the market place, the best I could do for premiums + max OOP was $19,680/yr.

I just looked at plans again...the one I looked at in the fall is no longer available; they apparently pulled out of our market. Now the best I can find is $23,032/yr.

We are at the point now of realizing we are going to have to take the leap and hope we don't hit the max OOP regularly and also hope rates stop their ridiculous climb. If we don't take that chance, we may never retire early due to the goal posts continually being moved out due to healthcare.


.

I have been rolling the dice for the last 10 years as I have a $10k deductible. So far so good(knock on wood). A little over 2 more years and I will be on medicare. Of course I factored OOP max's into the equation when deciding to retire, but certainly happy it hasn't become a reality to state the obvious.

 

[simple girl]

SG, I know exactly what you mean and share your frustration with costs. I remember looking at an 8% increase and thinking "whew, it could have been so much worse". That's crazy.

So true!!! It is so crazy. Impossible to model how much these costs may go up over the next 15 years (time I would be on regular healthcare market until Medicare). I use the Fidelity RIP tool, and they only allow for a 5.5% increase in healthcare costs...obviously it is only modeling for projected Medicare increases in costs.

I ended up creating a spreadsheet of my own for modeling marketplace costs (projecting a 13% increase yearly), so that I could fool the RIP tool into giving me a more realistic prediction of "FIREworthy readiness." Obviously that wasn't a high enough percentage. Yikes!

I have found that Medicare costs are much more stable, so hopefully you'll find a way to bridge 'til then.

Agreed! We'll be ok, I believe, as long as we don't hit the maxOOP every year. Not likely, but possible. Have to roll the dice at some point. I can't justify hubby continuing to work full-time for the "what if". Seeing too many people our age or just 5 years older croak unexpectedly!

I guess at some point the risk of croaking unexpectedly feels greater than the risk of having to go back to work to cover healthcare expenses. I think we are mentally very close to accepting that risk. Not easy, though!

As hubby would say, it's a choice between "the prettiest turd in the bowl".

 

[simple girl]

I have been rolling the dice for the last 10 years as I have a $10k deductible. So far so good(knock on wood). A little over 2 more years and I will be on medicare. Of course I factored OOP max's into the equation when deciding to retire, but certainly happy it hasn't become a reality to state the obvious.

For real! Hope we have the same good luck!

 

[kerik68]

I retired 2 years ago at age 47 and DH is still working. Our number will be 1.5 million and our house is already paid off. Hoping to get DH retired as soon as humanly possible but it's a bit complicated with a family business.

We are Canadian so don't have to factor in health care other than prescriptions and out of province medical coverage when we travel. I'm continuously grateful for this.

 

[jcnyc]

Currently my number is around 600-800k in post tax assets. Reckon investing that portfolio in higy yielding dividend stocks should more than cover expenses for me. Will move abroad and be able to live cheaply and travel full time (no desire to come back to the USA full time) on $25-30k a year. First stop, to be a dive instructor in the Maldives and see what I feel like doing after that!

Also have a property in Manhattan that I will sublet out that should generate a few hundred a month. It will ultimately be my "safety net" in 25 years once the mortgage is paid as that thing will be worth at least $1.5m.

My friends think i'm a bit of a nutjob for my plan. Currently am 30 and made about $270k last year (salary+bonus). I've mostly given up the unnecessary high rolling NYC lifestyle and manage to save most of my money (~70% of salary, and the entire bonus goes straight to the brokerage).

If i retired the old fashioned American way at 65 and assume my income increases a modest 3%/yr (which is hugely underestimated in the world of finance), Personal Capital is saying I'll have some ridiculous number like $25m. Who the hell actually needs that kind of money is my question!