Let me preface this by saying that I am very glad I found this place, and that I wish I had seen this when I was in my early 20s, because I have made a considerable number of mistakes, and now, late in life, I need to get all of this sorted out.
We have just recently moved to Colorado, for health, Quality of life and family reasons. We are still dealing with the vestiges of the move as we have only been here for 4 weeks. We have not purchased our bicycles yet!
We both work from home, so we have zero commute, and we use the car once per week for groceries etc.
My wife and I want to retire early, but given our very late start and now lack of house (which may not be an issue - we like renting), I am throwing myself at the mercy of the forum for advice and face punches when needed. In terms of early retirement, I would like to be done by 62 rather than 67, or earlier if possible.
At this time I don't have a specific question, I just want to make sure I am not sabotaging myself.
Life Situation: Married filing jointly, No dependents, USA, CO
Ages: 52 (me) and 55 (DW)
Gross Salary/Wages:
Me: $ 92K
DW: $150k
DW also gets an annual bonus ~$25k
Individual amounts of each Pre-tax deductions (I don't have the info in front of me but as best I can remember)
My 401k: (27%) - small employer match
DW 401k: (15%) - great employer match
DW ins: No idea but it covers me too
With the 401k deductions, we are both fully funding our 401ks including the allowed top up amounts, so the 401Ks are building by ~24K per year, for both of us. We plan to continue to do this for as long as we can.
There is no other income
Assets
Emergency Fund | $10,000 (0.01% interest) |
DW 401k | $200,000 |
me 401k | $64,000 |
DW IRA | $50,000 |
Me IRA | $9,500 |
| |
Total | $333,500 |
Liabilities: small car loan at ~$15k Should be gone by September.
Joint Monthly expensesElectric | $ 35 |
Gas | $ 35 |
Rent | $ 1960 inc trash & water |
Phones | $ 250 (3 lines inc data) |
Car Ins | $ 100 |
Renter Ins | $ 10 |
Petrol | $ 30 |
Internet | $ 50 |
Groceries | $ 1000* |
Amazon | $ 10 |
Netflix | $ 11 |
Entertainment | $ 100 |
| |
| $ 3591 |
*Groceries plus pet food/expenses, as we own a dog.
Individual expensesMe: | | DW: | |
Spotify | $ 11 | Spotify | $ 11 |
HBO | $ 15 | Dropbox | $ 10 |
Britbox | $ 7 | iCloud | $ 3 |
Dotster | $ 7 | Boho Box | $ 25 |
Allowance | $ 100 | Allowance | $ 200 |
Storage | $ 108 | Work Travel | $ 800** |
| | | |
| $ 248 | | $ 1049 |
Take home = 6000+3480 = $9480
total expenditure = 3591+248+1049 = $4888
Delta = 9480-4888 =
$4592**A note about the travel.
Currently DW has to pay for her own work travel
It is one of the reasons she gets the big salary
We are working on resolving that issue.
What have we done so far to improve our situation?- Over the past year we have:
- sold our house that was way too large for us
- Moved to a new state (GA -> CO health benefits and closer to family)
- Eliminated all student debt
- Eliminated two car loans
- Eliminated one car
In doing this we reduced our monthly expenses from $6k to $3600
Total debt eliminated ~$368,000
Monthly cash freed up ~$2,400
In addition, we have reduced my monthly costs:
Antivirus | $ 9 - moved to a free service |
Hosting | $ 14 - removed all hosting |
Dotster | $ 13 - Let some URLs go |
CBT Nuggets | $ 83 - moved this to a work expense |
| |
| $119 - removed from my monthly expenses |
What do we need to do next?The next steps in getting our outgoings down are:
- Resolve DWs work travel situation
- Reduce Phone cost from $ 250
- Reduce Car ins by moving to a higher deductible
- Reduce Groceries plus pet food/expenses (from $1k)
- Reduce the Storage costs from $108 to $55*
- June/July/Aug/Sep to pay off car
*ideally I would like to get rid of the storage but we have a large collection of books, some family heirlooms and other stuff that does not fit in the apartment at the moment. This is in part because we both work from home and effectively have two offices.
So at this time it looks like after September we will have about 4500-4600 available to work with.
How am I doing and are we screwed?