Well, I just passed my "1 year retired" point last week. For some reason, I was well aware of it as it was a month away, a week away, then it just drifted out of my head. Anyways to put in numbers so I can come back and see where I was and when, I'll first say that before I retired, I was quite concerned with having enough available cash and had something like $350k between Ally, Redneck and my normal credit union. Well, this has been cut down because I learned about IRMAA on Medicare, which I've talked about before. What IRMAA is, it's increased premiums on Medicare part B and D. Since Interest is income, it adds to other income to make MAGI higher and risks going over the IRMAA lowest limit. Yes, it has several brackets and my first 2 years, I got hit with IRMAA from my working last 2 years of income. I did fill out the forms to recalculate with the "life change" event being my retiring and they approved both.
So anyways, that $350k is now $113k which includes DW's $50k distribution from inheritance. Where's the money gone? Some for living, some to fix a roof and some 40 year old windows and mostly gone into Schwab to buy BRK/b. Why Berkshire? They don't pay dividends. I've learned that dividends make my life difficult just like interest because it ups my income. Other actual income is cash from the tradeline companies. The biggest chunk making up my "income" is Roth conversions. DW and I have mostly used 401k's over our working time to save. We were very late even opening up Roths. Now, with my handy dandy Excel sheet, I see that if we don't Roth convert, once we're both getting RMDs, and we'll have the added income of 2X Social security, we'll be pinged into IRMAA. And when I go, DW will be many brackets into IRMAA. So I'm converting up until my income is just under the first IRMAA bracket. This year, that's $206k.
So after all that dribble, how's my balance after a full year of not working. Well, a year ago, I had a liquid balance (no house, no cars) of $4.1M. Now, I'm at $4.5M. The most I ever made in a year working was $250k. So by not working, making $400k, I out earned any of my working years. While I don't feel I should have FIRED back in my 30's or something, I really should have retired about 5 years earlier. Perhaps when my first son graduated from college. Don't wait too long. I'm not saying to retire with only 25 times spending, but having 58 times is over doing it.