Exactly six months ago, I retired… (part 2)
8/16/24
Exactly six months ago, I retired…
Perhaps discussing how I came to retire exactly six months ago would be a good place to go next — not a step-by-step road map of how we did it — just a summary of how it came to be when it wasn’t really something we had planned for long…
About 6 years ago, we signed up for a financial class – something like ‘retirement university’ – with a local financial planner. We had already saved some money over the years – for kids’ college funds and via employer 401k programs and had accumulated a small amount of additional money with no defined purpose yet. I guess the reality is we had (accidentally) made some good financial moves along the way (putting away new money from pay raises as if we never received them, putting away money from monthly car payments once they were paid off, etc.) and had some good fortune over the years, as well – without specifically thinking we were preparing for early retirement. But, now we were empty-nesters and college costs were behind us – so preparing for retirement seemed like the next logical step. Retirement was something we occasionally talked about, but it was always so far in the future that – to this point – it was daunting to really think about too seriously – 13+ years away we assumed. We knew I could begin receiving a pension from a past employer at age 60, so (at most) I had hoped we would be able to retire as close to then as possible.
So, we stumbled across this promotion for ‘retirement university’ and decided to sign up for the course – after all it was free and we thought we might get some insights from the program and thoughts from other attendees about what they were planning, their timelines, etc. Much to our surprise, we were by far the youngest participants in the class (in our mid to late 40’s at the time). Nearly all others were about to begin retirement or had already been retired for some time and some were already clients of this financial planner. We were stunned to discover that very few in the class had prepared for retirement (even at this late stage for them) beyond the 401k-type savings we had done. We knew then that we were further ahead of the game than we expected and that we wanted to get serious about how to really prepare for retirement – whenever it would eventually come.
We liked the content of the course and felt comfortable with the presenter. He offered a free consultation (which was of course the purpose in offering the free ‘university’) and we signed up for one within the next several weeks. In preparing for our meeting, we gathered our financial details, crunched some numbers, reviewed our own projections, and established some goals – including being financially ready to retire by age 60 (58 for my wife). As the date for our consultation approached, my wife’s goals became more and more aggressive – loftier than I expected we could achieve. We prepared our list of questions and topics we hoped to discuss during our free session. My wife said “let’s ask what it would take to retire at 55”. I laughed it off and replied that we should just review the numbers as they are, get a sense for where we stand, and discuss meeting the goal of retirement at 60.
The day of our consultation, as we sat in the conference room waiting, I said something like “don’t mention the age 55 retirement thing – we don’t want to embarrass ourselves in our first meeting”. After we went through a review of all of our assets, our monthly expenses, and our estimated needs in retirement (which was not easy to project 13+ years in the future), my wife mentioned the forbidden topic. I’m guessing I flashed a disapproving look her way, but our consultant didn’t flinch. He pulled up the projections for retirement at typical retirement ages, which indicated we would be set for age 60 and beyond (once 401k’s, IRA’s, and pensions were accessible – followed by social security if it still exists). Then, he discussed ‘early’ retirement – such as my wife’s newly-revealed goal of age 55 – and ran through the numbers and various scenarios. We left that meeting realizing that we could achieve my wife’s potentially embarrassing goal by aggressively saving to self-fund the pre-retirement years and motivated to make it happen. Over the next 2-3 years, we revised our plans and determined that we could meet and then beat that crazy goal of 55 years, eventually settling on retiring (both of us) just as we were turning 53 and 51 years old. Fast-forward a few years (which seemed to go by painfully slow even if it didn’t) and I retired a few months before turning 53 while my wife’s retirement was delayed (which, as I said earlier, is a topic for another day).
So, ‘how did I come to retire exactly six months ago‘? With some good fortune, some well-timed decisions along the way, and – probably most importantly – a wife that ignored my request to keep quiet about ‘the age 55 retirement thing’! 😉
next blog entry…
[8/16/24] Exactly six months ago, I retired… (part 3)
previous blog entry…
[8/16/24] Exactly six months ago, I retired… (part 1)
RetiredInIndiana 