At the end of each year I like to dig into my finances to do a bit of a review.Since I have all my numbers in Quicken, it's pretty easy.And I thought you might find the results interesting -- so I'm turning it into a post!As a reminder, 2017 was my first full year of retirement, so it provides a good insight into how our finances might play out over the rest of our … [Read more...]
Maxing Out a 401k and Early Retirement
In my post titled Three Sentences that Lead to Wealth, I made the following comment: The 401k up to the full match is a no-brainer. After that, it depends what you are trying to accomplish and by when. I maxed out all my tax-advantaged accounts and wish I had put a bit of that money into taxable accounts for easier access. One reader responded to that with the following: In … [Read more...]
Help a Reader: How to Retire with Plenty of Assets
Here's an email I received from a reader looking for some suggestions:From an early age, my wife and I were taught to save. So we paid ourselves first before anything else.By the time I met my wife to be we were both working for Johnson and Johnson. We maxed our 401k’s, deducted for savings bonds (remember those?) and company stock. We probably averaged close to 20% of … [Read more...]
One Great Retirement Perk: Dressing Casually
In my guest post for the awesome J. Money at Budgets are Sexy I listed the ten things I didn't expect in retirement.#5 was "I’ve gotten very comfortable wearing casual clothes." Here's what I said on that subject: I’m not going to say I have always been an uptight dresser. Let’s just say I was always dressed for the occasion. I like to look nice and professional whether at … [Read more...]
Help a Reader: Pension Options
Here's another post where a reader is asking for your suggestions on how to handle a financial issue.Please read his summary and give your thoughts below...The question I have is about pension options.I have a corporate (Fortune 50 company) pension fully funded. I need to decide how I want to take payment once I do retire.Cash out upfront is $1M, payment for … [Read more...]
How to Reach Financial Freedom and Retire Early Serving in the Military
The following is a guest post by Hank Coleman from Money Q&A. Hank is an Army Major on Active Duty with four years left until early retirement.When I retire from the Army in four years, I don’t plan on getting another job. I don’t plan on coming back to work for the federal government as a GS (government scale…we love our acronyms in the military, right?) employee or … [Read more...]
A Great Example of Working the ESI Scale
Several months ago I wrote Working the ESI Scale to Financial Independence.In that post I rated my performance in each of the three categories we discuss here -- earning, saving, and investing.A couple weeks ago I had a reader send me an awesome email where he did the same thing.I just had to share it with you.Here goes: I am writing you today in great thanks … [Read more...]
Three Steps to Determine if You Have Enough to Retire
I've posted a ton on retirement including: how to retire early, whether $1 million is too little to retire or not, and how $3 million is not enough to retire.But those posts tend to be "how to's" with general suggestions.Today I'd like to get more specific and provide a roadmap for those wondering if they can retire or not -- a way for them to calculate their numbers … [Read more...]
Retirement One Year Anniversary Update
Can you believe it's been a year since I retired?It seems like it's been longer (in a good way).My last retirement update was at six months and from here on out I'll probably only have annual reviews (maybe every six months if something exciting happens).To make this summary easier to read, I've put my thoughts into categories.Here's what's happened since my … [Read more...]
Why $3 Million is Not Enough to Retire On
One of the questions I get emailed quite often goes something like this: I read online that you have $3 million and retired at 52. How did you do it? I am in about the same situation and I'm afraid I don't have enough. That's paraphrasing, but those are the general thoughts.There are actually two questions here that I'll address: 1) How did I manage retirement on $3 … [Read more...]
