Post-retirement posters

[RoadLessTravelled]

MOD NOTE: Anyone is free to post.  Please delineate if you have FIRE'd, or merely are planning to, when answering the OP's question and they can sort out the responses they're interested in.  Cheers!

Then presumably, I am free to remove my question. 

[Jon_Snow]

Read my first Journal post.

[pbkmaine]

I am 58 and DH is 66. He retired 3 years ago and I started to throttle down. As of the first of this year, I work about 5 hours a week for my old company. This is the second marriage for both of us, and complex life circumstances and financial obligations meant that we did not start saving intensively for retirement until we married 14 years ago. Unlike many others here, we both liked our jobs and enjoyed the sense of achievement they gave us. So we did not feel under any pressure to retire very early. At the end, we stopped enjoying the travel, so that helped inform our timing. As far as the money goes, DH has a 75% joint and survivor pension from his company that fully covers our expenses. My very part-time work covers any "fluff". We have investments in the low seven figures, and I am not sure when or if we are going to use them. I have at the back of my mind that the money is there for medical and LTC expenses, though we have very good LTC insurance. DH will take SS at 70, I will take half of his at age 66 and switch to all of mine at age 70.

How did we get here? Well, DH worked for a multinational with great benefits. We were both well compensated and saved off the top. Except for food, we don't shop much. When I buy clothes, they tend to come from thrift shops. Our furniture, which is wonderful quality, was cast off by others or inherited from family, with a bit of IKEA thrown in. I sew slipcovers and pillow cushions from fabrics I collect from thrift shops and garage sales. We have one car, maintain it well and plan to drive it for a long time. We also have a golf cart (we live in an over-55 community with extensive golf cart paths) and both regular and e-bikes and live within biking distance of everything we need. But the real secret for us has been to opt out of the expectations of others. Mrs. Jones down the street just got a Cadillac SUV. Good for her. We don't need one.

[regulator]

Depends on how strict your definition is.  I consider myself FIREd, but I have been doing an easy and lucrative contract job for several months.

[sol]

Depends on how strict your definition is.  I consider myself FIREd, but I have been doing an easy and lucrative contract job for several months.

Also depends on how you separate FI from RE.  Many more of us are FI but chose to continue working, for a variety of reasons.

Oops, did I just violate the instructions about who is allowed to post in this thread?  If only there were some way to screen out certain people from public spaces, maybe with some kind of rule or law based on income or employment or martial status, or gender or sexual orientation, or maybe social class or skin tone. 

Or, you know, we could all stop being such total douchebags and accept that we don't get to tell other people how to behave in the internet.  Just a thought.

MOD EDIT: Forum rule #1. Also please read mod edit in the next post.

[EscapeVelocity2020]

Oops, did I just violate the instructions about who is allowed to post in this thread? 
...
Or, you know, we could all stop being such total douchebags and accept that we don't get to tell other people how to behave in the internet.

That is classic.  Arebelspy must be totally checked out, because the forum is turning in to a free-for-all again...


MOD NOTE: Yeah, thanks for making me have to come back and deal with *.  ;) The nice, respectful tone is what makes the MMM forums great.  That doesn't come from the mods, but from the users generally being nice people.  A "free-for-all" can be found many, many other places on the Internet.  We're better than that.

[Retired To Win]

See my answers below!

Seems like although this is supposed to be the post-FIRE sub-forum, yet many posters appear to be pre-retirement posters.

Who is actually post-retirement here?  Anyone?
I AM!

If so, how did you achieve it(basic method); at what age; what is your post-retirement income bracket; is your income actually passive income from capital (leaving capital untouched) or are you drawing down capital?
I EARLY RETIRED AT 53 (14 YEARS AGO).  MY INCOME BRACKET IS $40K TO $45K A YEAR.  MY INVESTING IS ALL DIVIDEND FOCUSED, SO I AM NOT DRAWING DOWN MY CAPITAL.

I am post-retirement myself having achieved FI decades ago and currently living on a passive income of $50-65k per year without touching capital.
CONGRATULATIONS!

[Financial.Velociraptor]

Seems like although this is supposed to be the post-FIRE sub-forum, yet many posters appear to be pre-retirement posters.

Who is actually post-retirement here?  Anyone?

If so, how did you achieve it(basic method); at what age; what is your post-retirement income bracket; is your income actually passive income from capital(leaving capital untouched) or are you drawing down capital?

I am post-retirement myself having achieved FI decades ago and currently living on a passive income of $50-65k per year without touching capital.

NO non-FIREd posters please.  I don't want to know how someone plans to FIRE, I'm looking for how people DID FIRE.

MBA/Accounting/Finance/Corporate Drone type did SEC reporting, FCPA compliance, and budget monkey type stuff for oilfield services for about 8 years.  Saved 60-65% of take home and pulled the ripcord when a role and supervisor change made my work less fulfilling.  No hard feelings; it just stopped winding my spring and I left on good terms.

FIREd 5OCT2012 at age 40.  Stash is about 500k +/- several thousand depending on the mood of Mr. Market at any given moment.  Stash kicks off passive income in the form of dividends (about 65%) and options premiums (about 35%) of about 38k-60k (it varies widely) a year, I do not draw down principal but rather increase it over time with savings from the passive income.  Current surplus is currently going to closed end municipal bond funds.  I need about 35k to maintain my spendypants/foodie lifestyle and passive income covers that even in lean years with weak options premiums environment.  If things got tight I could probably cut back about 15k a year without feeling miserable as a result.  I probably deserve a Mustachian *facepunch*...

Debt free including extinguished mortgage.  Have a smallish defined benefit pension I can start collecting at 55.  Will take SS at earliest legal date.

I may go back to work on contract for a favorite old supervisor who needs help for about 5 months until a merger completes.  The hourly rate is 85 with up to 10 hours OT at 1.5x per week.  I could make six figures in less than half a year.  I'm still a corporate whore apparently but I'm a high dollar ho' and I choose my Johns wisely these days.

HTH

[Bjorn]

A former coworker of mine retired at 39 but had to

...oh wait Im not FIREd so can't post about it here.

MOD EDIT: Forum rule #1. Just because someone else is a * doesn't mean you should be.  Please read mod edit in the earlier posts.

On topic posts include those answering OP's question about whne you FIRE'd, how you got there, etc.  Snarky posts about who he wanted commenting are not appropriate.  Cheers!

[Exflyboy]

Yup FIRED, details in my link below.

I quit last year at 52 with about $1.3M at the time (about $1.55M now). I have a small pension which I could start drawing next year at $15k, we have a rental business ($15k). Wife is still working ($30k + HC bennies). Wife gets a pension in 8 years ($16k), then I get another small pension (about $10k when I'm 65)

Not sure how long we'll be in the rental business.. we have a single wide trailer and a small cabin.. both are deteriorating.

We have a paid off house and no other debt.

I can't resist doing a little p.t. contract work for an old employer.. its a fun job, well paid and provides travel bennies of airmiles and hotel points.

Last years expenses were $29k.. projecting $35k when the wife quits and we need Obamacare.

Planning a lot of travel when the wife quits.

[deborah]

Just back from a couple of months in Turkey... Saw some amazing things there (Ani, Gobekli Tepe, Ephesus...), and some sad things (Syrian beggars and Syrian refugee camps).

Sure I'm FIRE - could you work and spend a couple of months in Turkey?

How did I do it? Just saved most of my income - like MMM says. It works. Especially if you don't spend much. Each year my stash increases even though I am retired because I don't spend as much as it makes.

This year I splashed out! (But my stash has still increased)

Turkey was one of the few things on my bucket list (if you are satisfied with what you've got, you probably don't have a big bucket list). My father was named after his uncle who was an ANZAC and died, along with a lot of other young men of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France, Turkey and England, at Gallipoli in 1915. So I got a ticket for the centenary commemoration service (I was lucky as there were four times the number of people who wanted tickets as there were places in the ballot), and I saw what I wanted to see. Where all the battles were fought. Where Australians died. My great-uncle was in the Light Horse, and I saw Lone Pine. I have also loved the tiles, the textiles, the food and the archeology associated with Turkey. It was the other reason for going. I saw a lot of the country, including Mount Ararat, the Armenian border, the Syrian border, and many things in between. The things everyone sees and the things only a few see. I saw wild irises and masses of wild flowers, tortoises and other animals. And it was absolutely wonderful!

[arebelspy]

MOD NOTE: OP was apparently not interested in the open discussion, and has apparently edited his first post to take his ball and go home.  Locking thread.  Feel free to start your own discussion on the same topic, if you wish, but open to everyone.  PM me or any other mods with any concerns.  Cheers!