Countdown clocks

[frugalecon]

I am curious how many Mustachians maintain a countdown clock. I have an Excel spreadsheet where I track my vacation and sick leave, and I have a separate page that calculates time elapsed at my current job and career overall, as well as time remaining until three different retirement dates (optimistic, most likely, pessimistic).

Am I unhealthily focused on retirement?? (I guess this is the wrong place to pose that question.)

[JohnGalt]

There are too many unknowns/out of my control for it to be worth even attempting to put a target date to use for the countdown.  A target year, sure, but a specific day within that year?  Why bother unless you're very close?

[frugalecon]

There are too many unknowns/out of my control for it to be worth even attempting to put a target date to use for the countdown.  A target year, sure, but a specific day within that year?  Why bother unless you're very close?

At my employer, there are certain milestones related to pension and retiree health benefits that are triggered on specific dates, because they are tied to age or exact length of service. Thus, the value of my exit package has discontinuous jumps at exact dates.

[warfreak2]

I thought you meant this.

[GuitarStv]

www.deathclock.com

[Samsam]

www.deathclock.com

NO!!

[avonlea]

www.deathclock.com

Okay, so I'll stop bugging you after this GuitarStv.  But this reminded me of an episode from The IT Crowd.  You have to wait about 1/2 minute until this clip gets to the death clock.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON8cTi5NSMc

[hybrid]

We have a target date for my wife to retire that is two years, six months, and 27 days away, but I wouldn't say we're obsessed by it.  :)

[zachd]

yes

[arebelspy]

There are too many unknowns/out of my control for it to be worth even attempting to put a target date to use for the countdown.  A target year, sure, but a specific day within that year?  Why bother unless you're very close?

As a teacher, I can peg it to the day.  ;)

That being said, I don't care how many total days there are until I FIRE, just how many work days there are.  And since I don't want to go through the work of counting how many work days there are (due to summer break, winter and spring breaks, national holidays, etc. etc.), I don't have a countdown.  :)

I may when it gets closer or I get less lazy.

[Cassie]

I did for the last 10 years I worked.  It felt very motivating.

[hybrid]

We have a target date for my wife to retire that is two years, six months, and 27 days away, but I wouldn't say we're obsessed by it.  :)

We have a target date for my wife to retire that is two years, six months, and 26 days away, but I wouldn't say we're obsessed by it.  :)

[Rickk]

We have a target date for my wife to retire that is two years, six months, and 27 days away, but I wouldn't say we're obsessed by it.  :)

We have a target date for my wife to retire that is two years, six months, and 26 days away, but I wouldn't say we're obsessed by it.  :)

Only 938 more postings to this thread to go!

[arebelspy]

We have a target date for my wife to retire that is two years, six months, and 27 days away, but I wouldn't say we're obsessed by it.  :)

We have a target date for my wife to retire that is two years, six months, and 26 days away, but I wouldn't say we're obsessed by it.  :)

lol.  Thanks for the early morning laugh.  :D

[frugalecon]

We have a target date for my wife to retire that is two years, six months, and 27 days away, but I wouldn't say we're obsessed by it.  :)

We have a target date for my wife to retire that is two years, six months, and 26 days away, but I wouldn't say we're obsessed by it.  :)

I'm not the only one!

[Emerald]

I have one for my mortgage, but not retirement (yet).  Hmmm........

[arebelspy]

There are too many unknowns/out of my control for it to be worth even attempting to put a target date to use for the countdown.  A target year, sure, but a specific day within that year?  Why bother unless you're very close?

As a teacher, I can peg it to the day.  ;)

That being said, I don't care how many total days there are until I FIRE, just how many work days there are.  And since I don't want to go through the work of counting how many work days there are (due to summer break, winter and spring breaks, national holidays, etc. etc.), I don't have a countdown.  :)

I may when it gets closer or I get less lazy.

Okay, now I have this stuck in my head a bit.

Can someone better at Excel than I help me with this puzzle?

Let's say I figure out all the dates there is no school for the next few years til FIRE (some weekends, some holidays, some vacations).  How would I create a counter to the final day, taking out those days?  I can't just do final date - today's date - the total number of non-working days, because as the days pass, some of the days are no school days.  I'll have to constantly recalculate how many non-working days are left.

What's the easiest solution to this?

[JohnGalt]

There are too many unknowns/out of my control for it to be worth even attempting to put a target date to use for the countdown.  A target year, sure, but a specific day within that year?  Why bother unless you're very close?

As a teacher, I can peg it to the day.  ;)

That being said, I don't care how many total days there are until I FIRE, just how many work days there are.  And since I don't want to go through the work of counting how many work days there are (due to summer break, winter and spring breaks, national holidays, etc. etc.), I don't have a countdown.  :)

I may when it gets closer or I get less lazy.

Okay, now I have this stuck in my head a bit.

Can someone better at Excel than I help me with this puzzle?

Let's say I figure out all the dates there is no school for the next few years til FIRE (some weekends, some holidays, some vacations).  How would I create a counter to the final day, taking out those days?  I can't just do final date - today's date - the total number of non-working days, because as the days pass, some of the days are no school days.  I'll have to constantly recalculate how many non-working days are left.

What's the easiest solution to this?

If you have all of the non-work dates in a column, you should be able to do something like =SUM(IF(X6:X9>TODAY(),1,0)) where X6:X9 is the range containing your non work days (you'll need to do ctrl+shift+enter instead of just enter for this one to make it an array function) and then do a separate function that is retirement date - today() - the results from the first function. 

[arebelspy]

If you have all of the non-work dates in a column, you should be able to do something like =SUM(IF(X6:X9>TODAY(),1,0)) where X6:X9 is the range containing your non work days (you'll need to do ctrl+shift+enter instead of just enter for this one to make it an array function) and then do a separate function that is retirement date - today() - the results from the first function.

Neat.  I only do real basic stuff with Excel, and break tweak other people's spreadsheets they post, so IDK what an array function is, but I'll look into it.  The rest of this post made sense to me, so this should give me more than enough on which to get started.  Thanks!

[sol]

Okay, now I have this stuck in my head a bit.

Can someone better at Excel than I help me with this puzzle?

One easy solution.

1.  List all of the calendar days in one column.
2.  Put a 0 next to non-work days and/or a 1 next to working days.
3.  Sum the column of 1s between your today and your target date to get the number of working days remaining.

[arebelspy]

Okay, now I have this stuck in my head a bit.

Can someone better at Excel than I help me with this puzzle?

One easy solution.

1.  List all of the calendar days in one column.
2.  Put a 0 next to non-work days and/or a 1 next to working days.
3.  Sum the column of 1s between your today and your target date to get the number of working days remaining.

That is a pretty easy solution.

I'll have to figure out how to do step 3 - tell it to check the date column (say, A) and sum the number (from say column B, the 0 or the 1) only if the date in A is today or later.

I assume there's some later date function or I can translate the date into numbers and then use an If statement...

Hmm..

Also it'd be easier if there was a function to check if column A was a weekend, and then make column B automatically change to a 1 if so (IF A1 = weekend, 1, else 0 type thing). EDIT: For those doing their own, =IF(WEEKDAY(A1,2)>5,0,1) where A1 is the date. That will put a 1 where there is weekdays.  /END EDIT

Will do some googling later.

Thanks for the ideas.

[NewStachian]

I use Google Docs and have a financial spreadsheet in there. You can put a date into a field, convert it to a number then do ####-TODAY() to get the delta. this plugs into a lot of my calculators. I have calculations at all ages that take my current $/month savings rate and add that to my compounded nest egg to see what my monthly income is at different stages in my life. My favorite, though, is I have a tab where i set an amount which is how much I want my net worth to appreciate per month, subtract cash going to that goal, then figure out the annualized required market return to make up the difference. Although this is linear, it gives a great snapshot. If it says 20% i know i need to save more or my goal is too ambitious. If it says 2% I know I can increase my goal.

[CryingInThePool]

I use excel  =NETWORKDAYS(A2,B2,D2:D121)

Where
A2 = TODAY()
B2 = Retirement date which I tend to move depending on a good or bad week at the office.
D2 Range =  Paid Holidays, Personal Days, and 4 weeks of vacation which is generally 2 in the summer and 2 at Xmas.

[arebelspy]

I use excel  =NETWORKDAYS(A2,B2,D2:D121)

Where
A2 = TODAY()
B2 = Retirement date which I tend to move depending on a good or bad week at the office.
D2 Range =  Paid Holidays, Personal Days, and 4 weeks of vacation which is generally 2 in the summer and 2 at Xmas.

I was just coming back to post I finished, and then you post a MUCH more elegant solution.  :P

Well done.

I have 423 working days left if I don't teach any summer school, but (more likely) 533 if I teach two years of summer school.

Sounds like a lot.

(EDIT: Ack! And 826 total days, combining the working and non-working days!)

[soccerluvof4]

I'd have to keep hitting the reset button! although fewer and fewer times now!

[hybrid]

I have 423 working days left if I don't teach any summer school, but (more likely) 533 if I teach two years of summer school.

Sounds like a lot.

Yep, because you are using a large number. It sounds ghastly if you say you have 3378 working hours left until you retire. Now multiply that by 60 to get the working minutes!  Auuuugghhhhh! Try on "I have X months left to retire".   Ahhhhhh......

You are in such great shape, congratulations on your retirement in the relatively near future. My goal is still a little more than 12 years out (it may be less, it may be more, just too far out to know) and I like the sound of 12 years a lot more than 2700 working days.

[arebelspy]

I have 423 working days left if I don't teach any summer school, but (more likely) 533 if I teach two years of summer school.

Sounds like a lot.

Yep, because you are using a large number. It sounds ghastly if you say you have 3378 working hours left until you retire. Now multiply that by 60 to get the working minutes!  Auuuugghhhhh! Try on "I have X months left to retire".   Ahhhhhh......

You are in such great shape, congratulations on your retirement in the relatively near future. My goal is still a little more than 12 years out (it may be less, it may be more, just too far out to know) and I like the sound of 12 years a lot more than 2700 working days.

Sure, we can always tweak the units to make ourselves feel better.   I have 0.00225 millennia left!  ;)

Days seems the natural one to me, because you (generally) work a day at a time, rather than an hour at a time, or a year at a time.

If you prefer years, awesome.  It just doesn't make sense to me to use years.  It probably would if I had lots of them left though.

[hybrid]

Nope, I wouldn't either in your boat. But if you are going to have a countdown timer of some sort, I think it only makes sense to use one that is more encouraging than discouraging. 500 odd days just isn't that long period, so why not measure in days at that point. 2700? Ugh. 12 years is a lot easier to digest.

We have a countdown timer for our rental home mortgage and our primary residence mortgage. The glass on the left represents one green bead for every 1K of principal left on the mortgage of the rental, and the one on the right has a big blue bead for every 10K of principal left on our home. Each month my lovely bride gets to move a bead or two from the left glass to the middle glass, which represents how much principal we've paid down. It's a great form of positive reinforcement for her. In two and a half years we'll have an empty jar on the left, at which point I'll convert all the big blue beads into small green beads (because we won't be paying down 10K of principal each month, and waiting months on end to move one bead is not encouraging) and repeat the process.

[arebelspy]

Nope, I wouldn't either in your boat. But if you are going to have a countdown timer of some sort, I think it only makes sense to use one that is more encouraging than discouraging. 500 odd days just isn't that long period, so why not measure in days at that point. 2700? Ugh. 12 years is a lot easier to digest.

We have a countdown timer for our rental home mortgage and our primary residence mortgage. The glass on the left represents one green bead for every 1K of principal left on the mortgage of the rental, and the one on the right has a big blue bead for every 10K of principal left on our home. Each month my lovely bride gets to move a bead or two from the left glass to the middle glass, which represents how much principal we've paid down. It's a great form of positive reinforcement for her. In two and a half years we'll have an empty jar on the left, at which point I'll convert all the big blue beads into small green beads (because we won't be paying down 10K of principal each month, and waiting months on end to move one bead is not encouraging) and repeat the process.

That's awesome, I love it!

Sort of the opposite of the wall thermometer idea (decreasing the beads).

If days seems like too much, and years is too little at this point, maybe I'll switch to months now, and then when I'm within 3-6 months switch over to days.

[frugalecon]

I'm glad I posed the question, the replies are interesting. I started thinking about counting down when I calculated that I had 1000 weeks to go for my 30 years of service. This was several years ago. It depressed me, but then I thought that, if I walked 10 miles a week, I could get from my house to Singapore in that time. Now, in the back of my mind, I always think about where I am relative to that day, drawing a circle around home. Currently I am a few miles east of Denver, from the DC area. I wonder how far I will go before I move on to the retirement adventure.

[Spork]

I keep several different countdown graphs -- based on various different sets of numbers.   It also shows how spending increases/decreases change things over time.  You'll see upticks/downticks in what you would think was a straight line.  Sometimes the ups/downs are significant.

[tmoney]

I have a countdown on paper inside a kitchen cabinet. 7 years until the house is paid off.

[countdown]

I do a countdown in excel:
Column a.   Col b
Target date: x
Today's date: =today()
Calendar days: =b1-b2
Years: =b3/365.25
Weeks: =b4*52
Workdays: =b5*5
Holidays: =x (per year est.) *b4
Sick: =x*b4
Vacay: =x*b4
Adjusted workdays: =b6-sum(b7:b9)

I play with diff amounts of vacation days and am thinking of adding a sabbatical row. So, yes, I suppose I do keep track.

[marty998]

I have a countdown on paper inside a kitchen cabinet. 7 years until the house is paid off.

Mine is now December 2015 :) When I first took out the mortgage in 2010 the projected payout date was April 2024. Amazing how quickly you can smash it if you REALLY want to.

[dragoncar]

Measure in love, fools.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsj15wPpjLY

[sobezen]

This sounds like a prudent thing to do.  Does anyone mind sharing a template spreadsheet?  Thank you.

[C40]

I have this using the Today() function so whenever I open the file it is current. I changed my birthday for this screenshot for anonymity. I could post a template but I'd have to modify it a little bit to make the input section a little more generic.

I recently heard of a Stoic who has a physical day counter using small beads in two jars. There is one bead for each day of their life (with an estimation of when they will die). Each day they move a bead from one jar to the other and remind themselves that they have a limited amount of time here and to make it count. I'd like to do something like that but I'm not home every day so I made this file instead. I only look at it once every month or two.

[C40]

Here's a template. The calculations are not the most elegant way to do it (I had just made this quickly for myself not expecting to change or share it)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1i8uTRosOlXMDh0MEEtMGV4eVk/edit?usp=sharing

[arebelspy]

Neat, thanks for sharing C40.

[BPA]

1497 for me.  :)

When I hit 1500, it made my day.

[DoubleDown]

At my work it was pretty common to see older workers nearing retirement actually walking around carrying countdown timers with the number of years/months/days/hours/seconds until their retirement. It would go everywhere they would go at work, including coming into a meeting and setting the clock down on the conference table next to them. Some of them were well over a year away, but they had the timer with them wherever they went.

I remember doing a different mental exercise often in particularly pointless meetings. I recall thinking to myself, "Well this meeting was a complete waste of time, but I just earned $125 (or whatever amount) sitting here in this air conditioned room listening to that guy drone on. Life is pretty good!" It helped me get through some of the BS at work.

[BPA]

At my work it was pretty common to see older workers nearing retirement actually walking around carrying countdown timers with the number of years/months/days/hours/seconds until their retirement. It would go everywhere they would go at work, including coming into a meeting and setting the clock down on the conference table next to them. Some of them were well over a year away, but they had the timer with them wherever they went.

I remember doing a different mental exercise often in particularly pointless meetings. I recall thinking to myself, "Well this meeting was a complete waste of time, but I just earned $125 (or whatever amount) sitting here in this air conditioned room listening to that guy drone on. Life is pretty good!" It helped me get through some of the BS at work.

I've done that before, but the staff meeting we recently had was so insulting that I just could summon that argument.  :)  I wish they wouldn't make us participate in our degradation.  There are times when I want to refuse to do it. 

[hybrid]

We have a target date for my wife to retire that is two years, six months, and 27 days away, but I wouldn't say we're obsessed by it.  :)

We have a target date for my wife to retire that is two years, six months, and 26 days away, but I wouldn't say we're obsessed by it.  :)

Two years, four months, and 3 days. It helps when you don't look at the thread for a few months!

[Upstate NYer]

10 months, 28 days...or 333 days.