Way to go, Latebloomer! This blog has the most amazing people!
You show amazing courage and strength to get to where you are. Tripling your income! Going from temp to a more regular job, having great prior saving skills, and appreciation of MMM concepts! You must be a very good employee.
Find out about the company benefits like health insurance (Romneycare will help you), 401k, and further education to improve your job skills. Set aside a big chunk in savings, say 4-6 months worth, to provide security to yourself. You might even have that already? If your company has a 401k and a match, contribute to catch the match; if they match your contributions, say to 6%, then contribute 6%. Then, setup a Roth IRA; you are over 50, so you can add $6,500. Personally, in your situation, if there is no match on the 401k, I would do the Roth IRA first as it helps you be more liquid. I use Vanguard because they have a wide variety of lower cost index funds; I would recommend the Total Stock Market Index as your starter fund. Of course, knock off the restaurants, except the North End stuff, heh, heh.
As noted, check out the Social Security website (
http://www.ssa.gov/pgm/retirement.htm) and see what your benefit would be in various scenarios-@62, 65,70-to see where you are at. With a higher paying job now, the SS benefits could improve in 10+ years so that could help you out too.
The FI chart suggests you would need to be at a 65% savings rate to get to FI, but that is not counting SS benefits. Some decide to take the benefits later, say 67 or 70 to build up the payments, but that depends on your personal situation-health, other assets, love/hate job. Your full SS retirement age is probably 67;at 62, you would get 70% of your full benefit. After your full retirement age, you get about an 8% benefit increase up to age 70. You could also do a straddle and work part-time and then ease into not working at all.
I would say you are on your way, especially given your frugality skills and pluck in improving your income.
Welcome to the forum. You can help a lot of people!