I put this same info on the 2017 Cohort thread since I spent so much time there before switching to 2018.
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Well, I went thru the numbers as best I can at the moment and we officially qualify as having OMY disease.
In principle, we could quit our jobs tomorrow and sell our stock out of 401ks and other investments to pay off our mortgage, our HELOC, repair our two not-year-ready rentals, and he repairs on the mid-century modern house we bought to fix and flip. And then give away that house instead of flipping it.
We could never make a dime on our stock investments and still run a surplus (not counting the $20,000 to fix up the two rentals, $150,000 to fix up the flip, and the $180,000 to pay off the mortgage and the $40,000 to pay off the HELOC).
We really should retire at the end of this spring semester, 2017.
But my wife is on board to retire one year after that, in spring of 2018. And, frankly, so am I.
We both feel much better having a firehose of cash coming in while we'll be spending so much on the flip house.
It's that $390,000 of cash outflow that's mighty scary. Our salaries after taxes will cover $178,000 of that outlay over the next 17 months. That gets us down to just $212,000 taken out of the stash, which is still a scary amount. However, at that point in time, we should be within 6 months of finishing the flip (and all the big expenses would be known by then), which would bring in at least $250,000, which leaves the current stash amount intact or even bigger.
I'm not a genius financial analyst, but the reason we actually **have** a stash is because once we saved some money we just didn't spend it. It was out of bounds.
We might invest it, but we didn't spend it. And frankly, I would like to keep it that way. Intellectually I know that a flexible implementation of the 4% rule allows you to sell stock to live off of and you're not likely to run out of money - ever. But there's intellectually knowing something and then there's sleeping well at night.
Plus, since the biggest danger to a stock portfolio is a sequence of returns risk, it seems like the biggest safety feature for the portfolio is not to have to use it for daily living for the first 10 years. Or even better, ever, which is where we should be within the year.
Yep, we're definitely two victims of OMY syndrome. That's why we decided to switch from 2017 to 2018.
If we get all our rentals fixed up and rented, and health care for me will be affordable, and all the big ticket items on the flip (Roof, HVAC, Electrical, Plumbing, Mold Remediation, Heating Oil tank fill-up/removal and acceptance on the 40% Historical Property Repair Tax Credit ) all come in on or under budget, I may FIRE at that time instead of waiting for my wife to finish teaching her school year. Here's hoping I'm off this list and back on the 2017 list before the end of the year!