Living on a " fixed " income while not going " broke " .

jbobb1 said:
I've been 100% self-employed for 9 years and work is on track to fizzle out, so the wife and I will start receiving SS benefits starting Jan 2023
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I guess that means your signature line will need to change! :)
 
mmcmdl said:
No debt . Houses have been paid off 15 years ago . Land has been paid off for years . I've lived cheaply , a 20 % into the 401 K since I was 24 YO ? I add things up and it makes sense . I can earn $18,000 a year without penalties from SS which I plan on doing . I'll start up my LLC when I reach the limit . Medical benefits are pretty good thru the states program . I'm getting ready to tie up a few grand on a 4.5 % 1 year CD that has earned nothing over the past 5 years . A pension has been locked up for 23 years without a dime interest . So I have to go to the expert on this to figure out what to do .
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4.5% earnings on cash!
It’s been a long time since we could earn a small gain on those CD’s. Good for you Dave. My wife and I did the same thing.
The number one thing is low-no debt. That was our goal and we achieved it.
I need to keep my wife reigned in on spending. She wants to travel to Europe.
We are going to England again in May, and then she is going to Italy with her girlfriends a few weeks after we get back.
Now she is talking about a river cruise down the Rhine River!!
Oh and she wants to remodel the master bathroom.
Living within a budget is very important!!
Our Edward Jones guy told her she could do all this. I wish he wouldn’t have said that!!

Dave, you’ve worked hard, all your life. You may have a rough patch the first few months then things settle down. At least that was my experience.
Taking SS is a big decision. Good for you.
Stay healthy my friend. That makes all the difference.
Medicare is great compared to what I had at work. That saves a lot of money.
 
BGHansen said:
I retired at 62 & 5 months on 2/28/2022. We are doing great, not from luck (well, maybe some) but through saving for many years before retiring. More bragging than anything, but advisors will give a rough estimate of 10X of your salary in your 401K to be comfortable in retirement. We dipped to about 30x when the market took a dump down to 29K, and are back up to around 35X now. I'm not taking SS at this time. Starting next year I'll be rolling over 401K money into a Roth IRA so I'm paying taxes on just the 401K, not 401K plus SS. I'll wait until 67-70 to start drawing.

We paid off our house and other debt over 10 years ago. I'm also not taking a pension from GM (my former employer) as I had the option of a lump sum or a monthly pension. In my case, the lump sum was 21 years of my annual pension; easy decision. I should have probably retired from GM 3 or 4 years earlier, but didn't hate what I did. My Fidelity modeler 3 or 4 years ago showed that I could sustain what was my current salary at the time until 93. Now the modeler shows me bringing in 15% more than I made when I retired until I hit 93. With no debt, daughter through law school 5 years ago, son with a BS in Computer Engineering 3 years ago, we're are in a good place.

The toughest thing we're running into is switching from "save mode" to "we can spend some money" mode. We've needed new stools at our kitchen island for years. Do we REALLY need them, no, so we sat on the uncomfortable, unpadded, $10 each ones from Oak Express for 20 years. We just splurged on some $175 a pop ones with nice padded seats, lumbar support, swivel seat, etc. Oh no, $750 out of the bank account?!? Yep, and very glad we did.

Bruce
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Bruce,
You mentioned switching from saving to spending. Man, that is so true.
My mind set is I don’t want to spend a dime. We worked to hard to save I am having a hard time spending.
We are living on my SS and my wife’s teacher’s retirement. We are taking home almost $8,000 a month.
Our Edward Jones guy said at some point we will need to begin a monthly withdrawal due to inflation.
As far as I’m concerned, we can live on what we get monthly fir several years to come.
My wife is the major bread winner. This changed when I retired. I have to listen to her with renewed interest :)
 
Welp. I will be working until I die. I have always worked in sweat shop environments where the pay was just enough to get by on and no retirement packages. My choice, and I made sure my wife was a homemaker to raise our 2 children. My priority and overriding obligation was to raise my children to be good productive people in this world. Mission accomplished on that front.
I will have my home paid off when I turn 70. So that will be a bonus. Am 60 now. I will hopefully relocate to another state. God willing. Live in Commifornia right now. I will evaluate if I can retire at that time.

Life is good.


Cutting oil is my blood.
 
Janderso said:
Dave, you’ve worked hard, all your life. You may have a rough patch the first few months then things settle down. At least that was my experience.
Taking SS is a big decision. Good for you.
Stay healthy my friend. That makes all the difference.
Medicare is great compared to what I had at work. That saves a lot of money.
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I'm no mathematician by any means . I figure this . I added everything up that is liquid . I then divide the amount by 360 which represents 30 years in months . This is what I plan to receive each month . This amount along with SS is greater than my bring home pay at this point . Neither of the houses or land are in the equation .

So , I figure if I take the 1/360th a month , the money will last for 30 years without including dividends / interest . If the stocks go down , I'll be taking less each month and visa versa . I'm very diversified as investments go , and I tend not to blow money . Only on rare occasions ! :rolleyes: Also owning a rental house takes care of tax write offs and additional monthly income . I need to clarify this .....................at the end of EACH month I would remove 1/360th of the balance so it would vary on the amount . Sorry .

Does this make sense to all here ? :dunno: Like I said , I'm not a mathematician , and didn't sleep at the Holiday Inn last night either . :anyone:
 
The big unknowns are long term care in an old folks home.
Scares the #$4@sf out of me.
 
I was one who deferred retirement for 6 years, all the time piling on pension contributions into a private pension. This would be in addition to the state one, which is, I suppose, equivalent to what you are calling SS here. Of course, being fully being paid up on what is known in UK as National Insurance, deferring means one gets a bigger pension payout for one's remaining (hopefully) years.

@savarin in post #13 referenced the burden that is health funding provision in USA. Adding up what is taken from USA individuals for health-related needs must come to a total that could rival some nation's economies, and there is a significant fraction going into pure corporate profit that makes one suspect the health provisions are either fantastic, or not great value for money. In UK, as in most European countries, this is taken care of in other ways, and for that, I am pleased we have the system we do.

I know I have said it somewhere before in this forum, but I say here again. "However little you think you might have, if you keep going, you can end up with more money than time! "

While I now have enough to get by, and no debts, I regret staying in the race for as long as I did!
 
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