Life Situation: 39 years old, married filing jointly (but could file separately if needed), no dependents, US citizen living in the US
HOWEVER, we keep our finances separate, so this is only about me, at least to the extent that it can be. I realize that being married ties our finances in the eyes of the law. He makes a low six-figure salary and is not a hardcore Mustachian, but he's pretty frugal and loves his job, so I don't see myself needing to support him. I do wonder what his income will do to my taxes once I retire, although we'll probably split whatever we owe according to whose "fault" it is.
I work about 90 hours per month, plus two full days of travel. I'm away from home for about 1.5-2 weeks per month. I do it this way, rather than shorter trips, because I want to minimize the number of days wasted on traveling.
Gross Salary/Wages: varies quite a bit, but generally around $300,000/year -- although pay is going down in my industry, so it may be more like $200-250K in coming years. Also, I'm burned out and really don't want to keep going at the rate I have been. I can for another year or so, but any more than that and I'd probably start cutting my hours in half. Fortunately, I can work as much or as little as I want, and my pay is directly correlated with how much I work.
Individual amounts of each Pre-tax deductions: My take-home pay is generally about half of my gross income.
Other Ordinary Income: None, unless you count Vanguard investments
Taxes: This varies, but as noted above, my take-home pay is about half of my gross income after taxes, etc.
Current expenses (monthly total, averaged over the year)
Utilities $150
Groceries $300 (I'm a foodie/health nut. This expenditure makes me happy.)
Meals Out $50
Cell Phone $30
Personal Care (everything from toilet paper to clothes) $25
House (We paid cash for our house and have no mortgage. We did just buy the house a year ago, and there are several things we've been fixing/changing, mostly DIY. This category is for insurance, repairs, upgrades, etc. I expect spending to continue at this rate for another year or two, then decrease to general maintenance.) $600
Car (2015 manual Honda Fit, bought with cash) $100
Health $25
Dog $40
Fun (hobbies, day trips, etc.) $30
Gifts $50
Tax Prep $85 (This will go away after retirement. My taxes are multi-state and very complicated right now.)
Travel $500
TOTAL $1985 ... Let's call it $2000 to make the math easy.
Expected ER expenses: Same, plus about $370 for health/dental insurance. Possibly a little more for travel, as my parents and my best friend live across the country, and given more time, I'd love to visit them more often... at about $500 per flight. The only huge expenses I can think of are things like major house repairs (new roof, etc.) and someday a new-to-me car when the little Fit finally dies. In those cases, my plan would probably be to scale way back on my travel for a couple of years to cover the expense.
Also, I'd like to have a buffer to help cover intermittent large expenses like those mentioned above, so even though my expenses are currently about $24,000/year, I'd feel more comfortable having $1.2M saved so that I could withdraw up to $35,000/year. I've always been financially conservative, so I plan to withdraw no more than 3.5% per year. But is all of this too conservative? Am I wasting years of my life trying to prevent every negative possibility?
Assets: I'm not including my car or home because I would have to be extremely desperate to give up either. (Facepunch me for the car, but I live in a rural area. The closest grocery store that is not a fancy little roadside shop is 30 minutes away by car, and the only public transportation is a bus that only goes through town twice a day.)
Brokerage account, Vanguard: $352K in VTSAX, $31K in VBTLX
SEP IRA, Vanguard: $393K in VTSAX, $53K in VBTLX
Roth IRA, Vanguard: $62K in VTSAX, $4K in VBMFX
Personal savings account emergency fund: $50K
Business checking account: $39K (About half of this will eventually come to me.)
Debt owed to me: $60,000 (This is 30% of what was originally loaned. Payments are ongoing and have never been missed/late, so I have no doubt that the remaining funds will be repaid.)
Total = $1,005,000 (not including business checking account)
Liabilities: None
Specific Question(s):
Am I ready to retire, or would OMY be better? Am I being too rash or too conservative? I think I'm in a situation where I'm too close to the details and need an uninvolved person to give me their perspective.
I want to retire ASAP. I hate my job, and I hate all of the travel involved in my job. We recently moved to a new state and bought our dream home, and although I do enjoy traveling for fun, it kills me every time I have to leave for work. Even if my work were local, I hate it anyway. I do have work commitments through October which will bring in another $40,000 or so.
I've run these numbers by my accountant (I have one for my business. He's also a financial advisor. I have never used him for that, but I did pick his brain just for this.), and he feels that I'm in very good shape assuming I don't run into any major medical bills, which I don't expect given my family history and my own lifestyle. (Though that also suggests I'll live a long time, necessitating a larger 'stache.) He recommends pressing on until I reach $1.2M just to help mitigate any major medical bills or living past 90. This would probably take me until the end of next year.
I'm submitting this here to get thoughts from someone other than a financial professional who typically advises 60 year olds on retirement. I know many people here have personal experience that may be helpful to me and anyone else in my situation.
Thank you all so much for any opinions you may have on this. And please don't hesitate to throw any necessary facepunches... I'd rather hear it from you than figure it out the hard way later.