Late to the game but motivated

[Bigjones]

Good morning,

My wife and I are late to the game, we make decent salaries but got started pretty late, saving for retirement.  We currently have a combined savings of roughly 360k and currently contributing about 50k a year to 401k with another $7800 annually from our employer.  We have two kids in college so we are helping them at the same time as much as possible so it's pretty tight right now. We own our home, which is valued at around 188k, and we own a camp on a lake that's valued at around 150k.

I'm curious about everyone's thoughts on Empower/personal capital retirement type forecaster/calculator. It's currently telling me on my scenario that we are 99% going to be successful.  Makes me nervous as I'm attempting to and willing to retire younger at the sacrifice of more savings in order to do some things we have never been able to do.  We want to snowbird a bit out west during winter and then come back in the springtime.

[BiggerFishToFI]

Well what are your annual expenses? What are your ages? How soon do you want to retire?

Not familiar with that calculator but a lot of them use your income, not your expenses to determine your needed money in retirement which is not accurate at all.

[zolotiyeruki]

There are a multitude of tools you can use to project your hypothetical retirement.  cFireSim and FireCalc are two rather popular ones.

[Ron Scott]

I don’t see much need for forecasting and planning tools like that. No one can forecast correctly and a simple spreadsheet is sufficient for maintaining your records and planning for retirement.

Let me recommend the book The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing, which is well-respected, geared toward common sense, and not trying to sell you specific investment products, consulting, software, etc. I also think spending time on the Bogleheads forum can be helpful. You’ll find more about personal finance and less about philosophy of life.

Finally, the wisdom of the internet these days is in using historical returns on stocks and bonds to predict the future. But the truth is that no one knows what the future will bring, and its up to you to fund your retirement securely.

Good luck!

[AMandM]

Good morning,
It's currently telling me on my scenario that we are 99% going to be successful.

What is its definition of successful? Does that match yours?
What assumptions does it make about your contributions from now till retirement, your spending in retirement, the duration of your retirement, your investment allocation, inflation, social security, etc.? Do these assumptions seem reasonable to you?

If it doesn't tell you the answers to those questions, maybe switch to a different model like the ones zolotiyeruki suggested, which allow you to tweak the parameters to fit your situation.

[Bigjones]

Well what are your annual expenses? What are your ages? How soon do you want to retire?

Not familiar with that calculator but a lot of them use your income, not your expenses to determine your needed money in retirement which is not accurate at all.

My current expenses are 100% of everything not going to my retirement fund.  Which im currently putting $4186 monthly into it (included both me and wife and company match). This doesnt include some dividend reinvestments of roughly $200 a month and some annual bonuses at work that i put into dividend stocks or crypto etc.

[Bigjones]

I don’t see much need for forecasting and planning tools like that. No one can forecast correctly and a simple spreadsheet is sufficient for maintaining your records and planning for retirement.

Let me recommend the book The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing, which is well-respected, geared toward common sense, and not trying to sell you specific investment products, consulting, software, etc. I also think spending time on the Bogleheads forum can be helpful. You’ll find more about personal finance and less about philosophy of life.

Finally, the wisdom of the internet these days is in using historical returns on stocks and bonds to predict the future. But the truth is that no one knows what the future will bring, and its up to you to fund your retirement securely.

Good luck!

Im checking out that site now thanks!

[Turtle]

Another good one to check out is Rich, Broke, Dead

https://engaging-data.com/will-money-last-retire-early/

[Bigjones]

Good morning,
It's currently telling me on my scenario that we are 99% going to be successful.

What is its definition of successful? Does that match yours?
What assumptions does it make about your contributions from now till retirement, your spending in retirement, the duration of your retirement, your investment allocation, inflation, social security, etc.? Do these assumptions seem reasonable to you?

If it doesn't tell you the answers to those questions, maybe switch to a different model like the ones zolotiyeruki suggested, which allow you to tweak the parameters to fit your situation.

I guess the 99% means it did a monte carlo sim and says based on the parameters i should be ok, but it seems a bit close to me.  Im nervous as heck.

Im 53 and would dream of trying to retire at 57.  I recently found the social security tools which enable you i guess to plug in some ZEROS to see how it affects your SSI at 65.  So for me from 57-65 with all Zero's kind of hurts as it appears to shave roughly $300-400 off each of our SSI which I would really need to pull this off.

My plan was the following....

Retire at 57

Currently $361k in 401k, IRA, Stocks & Crypto
Take SSI at 65, Wife take at 65
Dividend income of 5k per year
We both work part time each for 5 years somewhere for 50k starting when im 57
Inheritance of about 80k somewhere around 60 - could be alot more , unsure
Planned on possible sale of house or camp around age 60 of $150k to fund

Desired retirement spending of 60k a year

Should have somewhere between 500k-600k by age 57, so for the first 5 years would only need to pull 5k out of savings as we are working PT
Then from age 62-65 would need to pull $55k out each year from savings
At 65 I would have to pull out roughly $31k annually then a few years later when wife turns 65, that gets reduced down to a bit over 9k annually.


We got started really late in life saving and we have finally moved up the corporate ladder to finally get nice incomes to allow us to save and attempt to catch up.
We have one daughter out of college and last daughter about to start so time will tell.

Ive gotten to the point in life where im kind of consumed with thinking abour early retirement and trying to find a way to make it happen.


I own a camp on the lake free and clear, we own our home free and clear.  What we would LIKE to do ideally is stay here at the camp or house from May-December 27 and go west and see things we havnt seen before from a few days after christmas till april and then come home each summer.  Its so hard to factor everything along with economy and ups and downs, quite frankly it scares the heck out of me.

[iluvzbeach]

FYI, SSI is a welfare type of payment based on need.  I believe you actually mean SSR as in Social Security Retirement Benefits.

What are your plans for healthcare insurance from 57 - 65?  Have you factored in taxes?  You mention dividends of $5K per year, but what are you basing that on?  I don't see anything in the numbers you've provided thus far that would provide $5K in dividends per year, assuming a large portion of your investments are in retirement vehicles.  Do you have an emergency fund?  How is it that you are now saving $50K per year for retirement but have such overall low balances?

IMO your numbers are pretty lean at this point.  It would probably be more helpful and meaningful if you were to do a full case study.  It would give you a better indicator of your true expenses and financial needs for retirement.

[newco]

Good morning,
It's currently telling me on my scenario that we are 99% going to be successful.

What is its definition of successful? Does that match yours?
What assumptions does it make about your contributions from now till retirement, your spending in retirement, the duration of your retirement, your investment allocation, inflation, social security, etc.? Do these assumptions seem reasonable to you?

If it doesn't tell you the answers to those questions, maybe switch to a different model like the ones zolotiyeruki suggested, which allow you to tweak the parameters to fit your situation.

I guess the 99% means it did a monte carlo sim and says based on the parameters i should be ok, but it seems a bit close to me.  Im nervous as heck.

Im 53 and would dream of trying to retire at 57.  I recently found the social security tools which enable you i guess to plug in some ZEROS to see how it affects your SSI at 65.  So for me from 57-65 with all Zero's kind of hurts as it appears to shave roughly $300-400 off each of our SSI which I would really need to pull this off.

My plan was the following....

Retire at 57

Currently $361k in 401k, IRA, Stocks & Crypto
Take SSI at 65, Wife take at 65
Dividend income of 5k per year
We both work part time each for 5 years somewhere for 50k starting when im 57
Inheritance of about 80k somewhere around 60 - could be alot more , unsure
Planned on possible sale of house or camp around age 60 of $150k to fund

Desired retirement spending of 60k a year

Should have somewhere between 500k-600k by age 57, so for the first 5 years would only need to pull 5k out of savings as we are working PT
Then from age 62-65 would need to pull $55k out each year from savings
At 65 I would have to pull out roughly $31k annually then a few years later when wife turns 65, that gets reduced down to a bit over 9k annually.


We got started really late in life saving and we have finally moved up the corporate ladder to finally get nice incomes to allow us to save and attempt to catch up.
We have one daughter out of college and last daughter about to start so time will tell.

Ive gotten to the point in life where im kind of consumed with thinking abour early retirement and trying to find a way to make it happen.


I own a camp on the lake free and clear, we own our home free and clear.  What we would LIKE to do ideally is stay here at the camp or house from May-December 27 and go west and see things we havnt seen before from a few days after christmas till april and then come home each summer.  Its so hard to factor everything along with economy and ups and downs, quite frankly it scares the heck out of me.

I'm very curious what part time job opportunities pay $50,000 a year?  Not saying they don't exist, but I've never seen anything like that.  I'm not being facetious, I'm generally curious what these jobs are as I will quit my full time position today to pivot to a part time role that pays that much.

[iluvzbeach]

I think there are many part-time opportunities that pay $50K per year.  Just last week I saw a posting for a non-profit in my area that was paying just below $50K for part-time and in addition to that they also paid a monthly stipend for health insurance.

I worked part-time (60% time) for my employer before FIREing and made right at $200K/year doing that.  Perhaps it all depends on what line of work you are in.

[Chris Pascale]

I see you're 53 with a 4-year timeline, have $360,000 and are putting in $4,000+ a month.

Using a calc that assumes investment growth in those next 4 years you'll have about $700,000. Let's assume you can't put anything into it from 57-60 (before you withdraw), it'll grow to about $900,000.

If things go to heck, you can work a bit longer, or mortgage/sell some stuff. You might also find yourself cutting back in areas you're not yet figuring. For example, I would not have guessed that my wife and I would have gone down to 1 car for the past year. We'll be getting a 2nd soon, but it's partially because our van just broke down for a 2nd time this year, so we'll soon have 2 vehicles, but only until the older one conks out for good, and then it might be back to 1 vehicle.........and in saying that, I could very well see myself with 3 vehicles between the 2 of us after all the kids leave, but don't have a plan for something like that; it's just a possibility.

[Bigjones]

FYI, SSI is a welfare type of payment based on need.  I believe you actually mean SSR as in Social Security Retirement Benefits.

What are your plans for healthcare insurance from 57 - 65?  Have you factored in taxes?  You mention dividends of $5K per year, but what are you basing that on?  I don't see anything in the numbers you've provided thus far that would provide $5K in dividends per year, assuming a large portion of your investments are in retirement vehicles.  Do you have an emergency fund?  How is it that you are now saving $50K per year for retirement but have such overall low balances?

IMO your numbers are pretty lean at this point.  It would probably be more helpful and meaningful if you were to do a full case study.  It would give you a better indicator of your true expenses and financial needs for retirement.

We got started saving LATE based on salary.

I currently am receiving about $3k annually on dividends and plan to continue slowly revesting to increase this as well as put more money into them as i can.

I do have an Emergency Fund

I plan to pull Healthcare costs out of the 60k annual.

And yes i meant SSR

[Bigjones]

Good morning,
It's currently telling me on my scenario that we are 99% going to be successful.

What is its definition of successful? Does that match yours?
What assumptions does it make about your contributions from now till retirement, your spending in retirement, the duration of your retirement, your investment allocation, inflation, social security, etc.? Do these assumptions seem reasonable to you?

If it doesn't tell you the answers to those questions, maybe switch to a different model like the ones zolotiyeruki suggested, which allow you to tweak the parameters to fit your situation.

I guess the 99% means it did a monte carlo sim and says based on the parameters i should be ok, but it seems a bit close to me.  Im nervous as heck.

Im 53 and would dream of trying to retire at 57.  I recently found the social security tools which enable you i guess to plug in some ZEROS to see how it affects your SSI at 65.  So for me from 57-65 with all Zero's kind of hurts as it appears to shave roughly $300-400 off each of our SSI which I would really need to pull this off.

My plan was the following....

Retire at 57

Currently $361k in 401k, IRA, Stocks & Crypto
Take SSI at 65, Wife take at 65
Dividend income of 5k per year
We both work part time each for 5 years somewhere for 50k starting when im 57
Inheritance of about 80k somewhere around 60 - could be alot more , unsure
Planned on possible sale of house or camp around age 60 of $150k to fund

Desired retirement spending of 60k a year

Should have somewhere between 500k-600k by age 57, so for the first 5 years would only need to pull 5k out of savings as we are working PT
Then from age 62-65 would need to pull $55k out each year from savings
At 65 I would have to pull out roughly $31k annually then a few years later when wife turns 65, that gets reduced down to a bit over 9k annually.


We got started really late in life saving and we have finally moved up the corporate ladder to finally get nice incomes to allow us to save and attempt to catch up.
We have one daughter out of college and last daughter about to start so time will tell.

Ive gotten to the point in life where im kind of consumed with thinking abour early retirement and trying to find a way to make it happen.


I own a camp on the lake free and clear, we own our home free and clear.  What we would LIKE to do ideally is stay here at the camp or house from May-December 27 and go west and see things we havnt seen before from a few days after christmas till april and then come home each summer.  Its so hard to factor everything along with economy and ups and downs, quite frankly it scares the heck out of me.

I'm very curious what part time job opportunities pay $50,000 a year?  Not saying they don't exist, but I've never seen anything like that.  I'm not being facetious, I'm generally curious what these jobs are as I will quit my full time position today to pivot to a part time role that pays that much.

I think if we BOTH had jobs we can get to 50k, yes

[mathlete]

You mentioned moving up the corporate ladder. Sounds like you and your wife might have a lot of capital built up at your workplaces. In my opinion, it might be easier to try to negotiate less work where you already are right now.

Perhaps at age 55, you go to your employers and say,

"Our youngest graduates college in two years and we're thinking about what life looks like after that. Would you guys be ammenable to an arrangement where I work four days a week, and take a month off in March for 70% of what I make now?"

Worst they can say is "No." And if they bite, Age 57 becomes a year where you

1.) Make probably more than the $50K a year you're budgeting for the part time plan.
2.) Get a month off and a bunch of 3 day weekends to determine whether you and you wife actually like the long term travel stuff.

Either you'll find out that your planned life might not be all its cracked up to be, but you've got one foot still in your corporate job, or you'll decide you really need that December-April time and you can switch to your original plan at age 58 wiht more money and one fewer year to SSR.

Whatever you do, I'd spend a lot of time thinking about what that part time work will be. People talk about barista FIRE a lot, but if we're taking that literally... I don't know. I worked food service for six years before graduating college and getting my office job. I couldn't imagine going back to doing customer facing work for a fraction of what I make now. And I'm in my mid 30s. I think I'd find it even less appealing in my late 50s.