Author Topic: Seeking Advice On Full-Time Employment. Wanna Be My Mentor/Coach?  (Read 1562 times)

Lochi21

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Background:

I am 46 years old, happily married with a healthy 12 yr old son.  I'm the alpha of our family and pretty much asked to make most decisions (including financial).  While interested in many MMM principles I'm not very savvy with investing or wealth creation so pretty much all my working life I have just maxed out our 401Ks (low cost index funds), paid off debts and in the last few years I have worked on reducing our monthly expenditures (increasing our savings rate).  The only debt I have is our house (135K left in at 3.25% (15 yr) - house value around 285K). I'm liquid 100K (money market savings account earning 1%) and the rest is in wife's 401K and my Betterment IRA.  Personal Capital currently puts our net worth at about 650K .  Better than some, worse than others and obviously not 100% on point with the MMM philosophy.

About a year ago I left full-time employment (scientist at a pharmaceutical company) to get out of a stressful work situation and play Mr. Mom for a while while my wife pursued a career opportunity.  We had saved enough FU money (thank you Jim Collins) to make that an easy reality.  It also helped my wife is a high-earning career professional who loves her job and embraces the Mustachian-lifestyle.  I did this thinking I would go back to work full-time after a little break but I've yet to find something that I enjoy and I really don't want to go back into the high stress Quality career where I stand the best chance at earning decent money.  So now I'm wondering if I need to?   

Currently 1K comes off our mortgage principle each month and I typically transfer 2.5-3K into our money market savings the last day of each month.  My wife's monthly take home is about 6.5K so our saving rate is pretty decent but obviously our monthly savings amount is nowhere near what it was when I was working full-time. I am focusing on the money-market account currently because I was planning to save up for another year and then make a lump sum payment and go mortgage and debt-free.  My thought process is that I'm conservative by nature and with that final hurdle out of the way, there is no reason we couldn't save almost 60K each year for retirement & investing.  Plus, I could mentally handle all the market swings with zero debt to worry about and only one full-time income.  For the record, I have always wanted to be a millionaire by age 50 (just something on my bucket list) but I'm now struggling with the decision to go back to work full-time to make that a reality.  My wife's job is stable and comes with 11 weeks of vacation each year (summer and holidays) so pretty much any job I find now will not even come close to that vacation time and we love to spend time on our boat in the summer - our one major vice. When I ask her today, she has no desire to retire anytime so I would say a minimum would be 10 yrs.

Question:

I know there are some FIRE calculators and other tools you can use to determine if you can retire (not go back to work full-time) here but like I said I'm not very savvy at doing all this.  I was hoping there might be somebody out there in this forum who would like to work with me on "running the numbers" factoring in a high-earning wife, health insurance, and our conservative nature?  Obviously, many turn to financial advisers to make these decisions but we all know they don't come at this from a Mustachian viewpoint.  Is there anyone out there who loves to give financial advice who would like to discuss this further (PM me) or point out some major glaring mistakes?  I'm good at following plans and receptive to most feedback.

Thanks for your time.

P.S.  I'm working pretty much every day as a substitute teacher and paraprofessional (easy low-stress job) which allows me to take a day off whenever I want and have the summer off.  Again, I'm not sure if I should be doing this because I don't know if I have enough chips in the market to survive long-term?



mxt0133

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Re: Seeking Advice On Full-Time Employment. Wanna Be My Mentor/Coach?
« Reply #1 on: May 18, 2016, 11:04:22 AM »
If you are already socking away 2.5k-3k a month with you only working part-time jobs, there doesn't seem to be a need for you to go back to work if your wife has no intentions of retirement. 

If you list out your expenses then you will know how much you need in retirement savings by multiplying that number by 25 to start with.  Then we can factor in other things like emergency fund, college tuition, ect. that is specific to your situation.

Without any other details, if you continue to max out your wifes 401k and max out your IRA, and your wife works until full retirement age.  Then with your current nest egg, a paid off house, and social security for both of you ( you should logon to SSA.gov to get estimates on what your benefits are) you and your wife should be set.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!