Are you ready for retirement?

TheFORCE

I bet a lot of people here are nearing retirement or are pretty close. My self i have another 25 years or so, still I don't think thats a lot of time.

Even though I tried to be mindful about retirement through the years i still think i could have done better with more investments or more savings.

So, are you ready for your retirement?

I'm thinking about this plan at the moment.
I live in a coop apartment about 1 hour commute from my work. In the next 2 years I'll have my mortgage paid off. After I've done this I'm hoping I'll also have saved another 40k-50k in the next 2 years.

At that point I'll look to rent my coop (currently in my area my apartment would go for about $1800) and move 30 minutes to 1 hour further away from my current job and buy a house by using the 40k-50k down payment. Hoping my salary plus the rent income would cover the mortgage payment at the new house.

By doing this, I'm hoping when I retire in 25 years I'll have 2 houses. One to live and hopefully paid off and one to get income from which will allow me and my wife to have a somewhat middle class life.

I'm also in the process of saving for my kids college so i wont have to pay huge amounts when they go to school.


I'd like to hear other people's retirement approach to compare plans and ideas i guess.

scaredoftests

I am not ready, even though I am 58. My hubby and I have saved a lot, but will a million dollars be enough to retire on? No way. You have a 'coop'? Or a co-op? Sorry, in that type of mood.

SteveLavoie

I am 41, and the day I will die, you will have to take my keyboard and mouse from my hard cold hands No plan to retire, slowing for sure, but would I stop working to get at home and trying to play at home with the same thing I would do at my job Better be paid

NetworkNewb

Bitcoin

NavyMooseCCNA

My retirement will start about five minutes after I die at my desk. I have no illusion to being able to build any kind of retirement at my age at my current income. I was a financial adviser for over a year and I have a good idea of what is needed

the_Grinch

I get a pension from my current job, but like most of you retirement will start 5 minutes after I die. Just hoping to get my student loans paid off before that. I did start using Acorn, which is an app that rounds your purchases to the nearest dollar and places them in an index fund.

TheFORCE

Oh man i was hoping to get better reaponses. I'm surprised people dont think about their retirement.

Ps. I meant co-op

tedjames

I'm eligible to retire from the gubment in 2521 days, 8 hours, 43 minutes, and 59 seconds. Make that 58, 57, 56... (That's just under 7 years).

I'm eligible and will get a pension and all that jazz. Currently exploring ways to invest some of my savings.

Not sure if I'm going to retire when I'm eligible. Not sure if I'll be able to afford it. Maybe I'll double dip (take retirement, take a month off, and go back to work). I may just love what I'm doing so much that I won't want to quit. Maybe I'll finally become a full time musician! Could look into temp or contract work. Who knows that far away?

beads

Financially yes. Would I want to retire? Maybe not full time. I actually enjoy what I do for a living and there is only so much gardening and farming to accomplish in 2.5 seasons.

- b/eads

Dakinggamer87

I'm prepared and have started the foundations when I started saving in my 20's. I enjoy the financial side of investing and looking at passive income streams its fun

psheehan5

Interesting question. I am not ready to retire, financially OR mentally and I'm 53. I hope I will be financially ready when I'm 65. When I do retire, I don't know what that actually means for me. I can't just putz around the house because I'll drive my wife crazy! There is a dude I work with who is 62 and he just convinced the company to let him work 30 hours per week instead of 40 and he'll probably do that as long as they'll let him. There is another dude I work with that is 70! Life is good as long as you're on the top side of the dirt I guess...

TheFORCE

Wow too many workaholic people in here. Really people? You want to go to work when you are 70+ or until you kick it anf listen to your manager and co-workers complain about everything and anything? Lol.

Why not invest your time teaching and playing and spend more time with your family and grand kids or change your lifestyle and try to live longer. Why waste your remaining hours in an office lol.

Theres so many things to do and see in this world.
Very disappointed that people are conditioned to accept working until their final hours.

jamesleecoleman

beads wrote: »

Financially yes. Would I want to retire? Maybe not full time. I actually enjoy what I do for a living and there is only so much gardening and farming to accomplish in 2.5 seasons.

- b/eads

What do you usually grow?

EANx

TheFORCE wrote: »

So, are you ready for your retirement?

Based on the numbers, I could survive on retirement in early 50s but aiming to fully retire at 62-63. Having already put a kid through college, I want to enjoy the time before I start slowing down.

TheFORCE wrote: »

Oh man i was hoping to get better reaponses. I'm surprised people dont think about their retirement.

Maybe the people who have good plans for retirement were working instead of surfing the internet. :P

scaredoftests

What is so wrong about wanting to keep working? Look at George Burns or Georgia O'Keefe.. If I am capable .why not?
When I DO think about it though..I'd like to be at a beach with a dog walking business.

NetworkNewb

TheFORCE wrote: »

Why not invest your time teaching and playing and spend more time with your family and grand kids or change your lifestyle and try to live longer. Why waste your remaining hours in an office lol.
.

Teaching sounds awful to me personally. As far as spending more time with family/grand kids, I'd assume they would have school and jobs to go as well so you really wouldn't be much more time with them. But being around other folks during that time, working together and actually being useful to society sounds more interesting than playing golf all the time to me. Obviously you would have to have job you like to do. Maybe consulting or doing something else which involves interacting with people. I wouldn't choose a job where I would be a cube my whole day to do.

I'd would start trying to change your lifestyle right now to live longer instead of waiting until retirement too :P

I max out my 401k, put a chunk into investments each month, and should have my house paid off within 15 years so hopefully I'll have a little money when I get older (am 33 right now). But not having any job to do sounds like it would get pretty boring after awhile. Maybe just a part time job at least...

Rakurai

Retirement...... what is that. I will probably work until I'm near 60 (another 30 years). Have another house to get in that time, hopefully paid off. The sucky part to saving is for two kids college and weddings. Putting the minimum into my 401k for company match, the only good thing I have going for me is VA disability. I'm sure before I retire I will plan another couple of trips to the desert, can't pass up that ~2.5-3x the pay, compared to the states, that should help any retirement/house payments.

When I retire I will probably have a hard time finding things to do, also not sure if I can put up with the wife...

scaredoftests

Rakurai wrote: »

Retirement...... what is that. I will probably work until I'm near 60 (another 30 years). Have another house to get in that time, hopefully paid off. The sucky part to saving is for two kids college and weddings. Putting the minimum into my 401k for company match, the only good thing I have going for me is VA disability. I'm sure before I retire I will plan another couple of trips to the desert, can't pass up that ~2.5-3x the pay, compared to the states, that should help any retirement/house payments.

When I retire I will probably have a hard time finding things to do, also not sure if I can put up with the wife...

or she put up with you?

Dakinggamer87

TheFORCE wrote: »

Wow too many workaholic people in here. Really people? You want to go to work when you are 70+ or until you kick it anf listen to your manager and co-workers complain about everything and anything? Lol.

Why not invest your time teaching and playing and spend more time with your family and grand kids or change your lifestyle and try to live longer. Why waste your remaining hours in an office lol.

Theres so many things to do and see in this world.
Very disappointed that people are conditioned to accept working until their final hours.

I will be constantly traveling that is for sure and looking at new hobbies!!

I may work here and there but it's doing life purpose fulfillment and not working to work

beads

jamesleecoleman wrote: »

What do you usually grow?

Oh I have been rehabbing some of the worst or lack thereof soil you've ever seen. Really it was sand on most of the plot but the 45 came with a lovely 80 year old apple orchard - now 100 year old apple orchard. Today I can harvest two crops of alfalfa inter-mixed with buck wheat, Austrian peas, hair vetch and other non-crop/soil building plants.

In the less damaged areas I grow new almonds, walnuts, hickory, hazelnuts, trazelnuts, apples, peaches, pears, currants, blueberries and paw-paw. Basically whatever I can get away with in 4b/5a. Its both as the diving line runs through the property.

By the time I am at retirement age in say another decade plus I forsee remote work being more common. Heck, where I am now should eventually allow me to remote just to save space. Downside is I spend most of my day in meetings.

- b/eads

hurricane1091

NetworkNewb wrote: »

Bitcoin

LOL yes.

cbdudek

My wife and I are maxing our retirement accounts for the future. The thing is that I just don't see myself retiring. I enjoy the field and I enjoy working. Maybe I will be an independent contractor or something down the road and just work a bit part time.

After 20 years in the industry, I am in my mid 40s and feel I am just hitting my stride when it comes to IT. I have done network engineering, security, management, and now I am in sales. What a wild ride! I feel that the next 20 years will be even more exciting.

In short, hope for the best but plan for the worst. I will be ready to retire when I hit 60, but I probably won't be retiring.

NuclearBeavis

NavyMooseCCNA wrote: »

My retirement will start about five minutes after I die at my desk. I have no illusion to being able to build any kind of retirement at my age at my current income. I was a financial adviser for over a year and I have a good idea of what is needed

Sounds about right.

I have a high quality backpack and sleeping bag so hopefully I won't freeze to death if I become homeless. Does that count as a retirement plan?

NavyMooseCCNA

NuclearBeavis wrote: »

Sounds about right.

I have a high quality backpack and sleeping bag so hopefully I won't freeze to death if I become homeless. Does that count as a retirement plan?

My wife wants us to move to Vietnam (where she is from) when we retire. I don't mind wintering there, but I don't know about being there in the Summer...

ITSpectre

I hope to own my own IT business in the Future so I wont have to retire. I can just pass the reigns on to the next of kin. And enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Queue

I'm on a State pension so I would technically be able to retire at 53. A good bit of my "paycheck" goes towards this. I'm 28 now.

My goal is to have a lot of savings very accessible (cash account) not exceeding or going below ~50,000 (been saving ~7-10 grand a year so far).

I own a home for going on 5 years now so that would be paid off by "retirement" with the current terms. However, I would like to upgrade eventually.

After my highly accessible savings account is complete I will then begin to invest in an IRA or 401, etc.

At the end though if I keep this in track and hopefully have a good nest egg and income, I'd probably still work for as long as possible so I can go out to eat every night and make car payments on nice cars or something. For me right now retirement is about establishing the base.

stlsmoore

Yup plan on being able to retire in my early 50's and having at least FU money by 40. I'm in my early 30's so planning aggressively to reach this goal.

hurricane1091

i doubt most people get to retire going forward in the general population. Young kids take out massive amounts of loans and it's forever before they even get a real start. Wages are poor in many sectors as it is and jobs will continue to be phased out across the board. If SS runs dry, things will be pretty ugly. Even if you put $10k a year into a 401k for 35 years, that alone won't be enough to survive off of without SS. You figure the life expectancy will be so high by that time (I figure general health will go down as the population continues to eat poorly though but modern medicine will keep folks going long past their shelf life). I don't care about what the theoretical Forbes articles say, everyone here with a 401k knows 8% returns year in and year out does not happen. Just a couple of years ago many folks were actually losing money on their 401k, but fortunately the economy has been on the upswing it would seem.

A lot of folks here get paid well and are smart enough to have a 401k, and probably will have their debts squared away by the time they retire and be just fine. No one really ever knows though. My Aunt is retired and is paying such high rates for insurance that it's incredible to see what that will add up to over the course of 10 years if things do not change. We'll see though. For real though - bitcoin.

scaredoftests

We are not even factoring in SS in our equation in our retirement. IMHO, it is best NOT to.

cbdudek

hurricane1091 wrote: »

i doubt most people get to retire going forward in the general population. Young kids take out massive amounts of loans and it's forever before they even get a real start. Wages are poor in many sectors as it is and jobs will continue to be phased out across the board. If SS runs dry, things will be pretty ugly. Even if you put $10k a year into a 401k for 35 years, that alone won't be enough to survive off of without SS. You figure the life expectancy will be so high by that time (I figure general health will go down as the population continues to eat poorly though but modern medicine will keep folks going long past their shelf life). I don't care about what the theoretical Forbes articles say, everyone here with a 401k knows 8% returns year in and year out does not happen. Just a couple of years ago many folks were actually losing money on their 401k, but fortunately the economy has been on the upswing it would seem.

I don't know about this. If you put in 10k a year for 35 years with the annual rate of return of 7%, you are going to earn 1.4 million. If you factor in a 50% employer match up to 6% of salary, then you are going to make 1.8 million. Thats taking into account you start at 30 and end at 65. Now, if you factor in salary increases and you adjust your savings rate in accordance, you are going to be saving more to the tune of 1.8 million without employer match.

Not factoring in social security, thats a pretty good chunk of change.

hurricane1091

cbdudek wrote: »

I don't know about this. If you put in 10k a year for 35 years with the annual rate of return of 7%, you are going to earn 1.4 million. If you factor in a 50% employer match up to 6% of salary, then you are going to make 1.8 million. Thats taking into account you start at 30 and end at 65. Now, if you factor in salary increases and you adjust your savings rate in accordance, you are going to be saving more to the tune of 1.8 million without employer match.

Not factoring in social security, thats a pretty good chunk of change.

A lot of hypothetical here I feel like. 7% return every year will never happen, and you are assuming an employer match which isn't the case for many people. I understand where the 7% came from but personally I haven't seen that since I started. My last job it was 25% of the first 4% you put in, that's it. Put in $10,000 a year, and you'd only see $1000 from them. Who exactly is putting in $10,000 a year? Most people aren't ever going to sniff $100,000 a year salary any time soon, and 10% is a lot to put in regardless (to me it is the minimum but I digress). Here on TE things are a little bit different and many of us are seeing 10k go into our 401k a year, but I'm talking about the population at large.

Under my current financials, I'm apparently going to have 4 million dollars in my 401k by the time I retire. I sincerely doubt that. Will I always get at least 7% return every year? No. Will my 401k employer match always be the same? No. Will I hopefully put the same amount in each year if not more? I hope. This calculator assumes I will get a 3% raise each year, every year too. I have no idea what would happen if I stayed at my job for the next 40 years, I guess maybe it is possible? I have no idea. Maybe I'm being negative when I should be sitting here assuming I'm going to be rich as heck from 401k once I retire.

Still though, the population at large is doomed. Information is available these days and if you seek it, you will find it. We all know the hypothetical 401k scenarios and we're all here to try to advance ourselves and our paychecks, so if any community is going to be fine - it is the TE community. What folks in retail jobs, blue collar work like truck drivers, customer service folks, etc all plan to do is beyond me. This is probably not the best example. but the average salary for folks through all age brackets seems to be just 45k. Those people aren't putting in $10k a year, if anything at all. They can still end up with a good chunk through the hypotheticals but after taxes it's still less than a million bucks probably. Will that be enough in 40 years? I don't know that it is, I don't know that any of us really know for sure. The best plan is still to save as much as you can though, I think we all agree. Hope for the best but never assume it will happen for sure. Any one of us could wake up ailing tomorrow, find out we have cancer, and derail the entire plan. Live your life to the fullest every day, but do try to prepare yourselves for the future as best as you can. Don't work yourself to death and don't plan on working until death either.