I’ve been so preoccupied with our short-term goals of building an Emergency Fund and paying off debt this past year that I’ve given little thought to our retirement. But as a member of the Yakezie Challenge I’ve been reading some very cool blogs by people that are creatively pursuing early retirement and some are even living their early retirement today.
I encourage you to go check them out. Here are just few :
Jacob @ Early Retirement Extreme is retired and living off his investments at the ripe old age of 33
Sam @ Financial Samurai has a goal to retire by 45
In his early thirties, The Rat @ Ending the Rat Race recently achieved his goal to retire early
Be sure to check out all of the Yakezie members.
These blogs have inspired me to start thinking beyond getting out of debt and to start mapping out our future.
Most discussions on retirement center around a number. What number do you need to retire? A million dollars? Two million? Or find any retirement calculator and it will likely ask you what percentage of your current income you want to live on.
According to T.Rowe Price’s Retirement Income Calculator we will need $5,000/month to retire. That is a nice number but I don’t think it’s realistic because it’s solely based on our current income. Today our monthly expenses are around $3,200. In the next two years I expect that to drop to $2,500. We also plan to buy a home and pay it off before we retire. That will bring our expenses down even further. Even adjusting for inflation do I really need monthly retirement income that equals 3x my expenses? Truthfully I don’t know.
What I do know is that it’s hard to accurately forecast your income requirements without a clear picture of what you want your retirement to be. So how do I envision our retirement?
- Our house is paid off
- We have the appropriate Health and Long-Term Care Insurance in place to ensure we do not become a burden to our family
- We travel 3-4 times a year
- We have enough money to do the things we want to do
- We have enough in savings to support us at least 35 years
This is a simple list but it gives us a starting point to figure out what we need to do to achieve the retirement lifestyle we envision and how to do it in the timeframe in which we want to retire.
But this is the just the starting point. Now it’s time to build our retirement plan. I’ll update you on my progress and share with you the end result.
And now my question to you is – How do you envision your retirement? Do you have a plan in place?
Hi, I’m Cathy! I’m a former career-driven professional turned stay-at-home mom. Living on one salary has its challenges, but it is possible to live the good life while spending less. Cool to be Frugal is all about how we’re thriving, not just surviving, on a single income.
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I love this topic!!! Great post!!
Let’s see, I envision myself having all the things you stated as well, plus an awesome group of friends I play Tennis regularly with, and I will be comfortably in California, preferably San Diego:) But those are just two little minute pieces of information.
Traveling 3-4 times a year sounds great, though I think it may have to be relatively inexpensive vacations. Say 4 times a year for 20 years, that 80 trips, at $1000 a trip, that’s a good $80,000! Depends on so many different factors though, I don’t know enough about retirement to even begin to plan things down a to a T like that.
I work full time online so it’s hard right now to envison ever not working on my blogs and for a few select clients! However I do need to get some kind of retirement together, what f I get sick, or want to sail the world…..?
Yakezie members really do post a lot of quality that is inspiring me to think and do many things.
Thanks,
Forest.
For all intents and purposes I am retired … that is, I don’t have a job, I just have several businesses that collectively pay me enough to cover expenses and then a bit over. To me that is not retirement, to my friends it is.
But that is not my goal, my goal is to develop a frikken’ awesome passive income and the ability to generate income anytime I want some extra – you know, press “send” and make money. That is why I have taken on internet marketing. I see IM is a decent means to an end and thought that hey, I can do this!
Long story short: IM by far consumes the most of my time. To date it has cost me more than any of my other businesses to get going and to date the ROI both in terms of time and money is deeply mired in red. Still, I have come to love it and am confident that the money will come and exceed all that I receive now.
Retire? When you love what you do, why retire. I notice that the really, really rich, do no retire, they just keep on doing what they love and manage their income extremely well while being able to live the life that they want. That would be my ideal.
A Yakezie Member
I shy away from the idea of retirement because I hope to be doing something I enjoy (related to work) until I kick the bucket. I’d much rather work for less and live below my means while being happy my whole life than deferring my happiness until I’m too old to enjoy many aspects of it. I suppose I lean more towards the ideas Jacob has, but over a larger time frame say 10-15 years so that you can have fun without killing yourself while planning your early retirement.
Sort of like yours but I plan to travel 6 months out the year and have some type of business going
i am saving money for my retirement because i want to enjoy most of my time as an old man.,:~
as for my retirement, i plan to retire on an asian country and live a quiet and simple life.**`
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