6 Months To Retirement: This Is Starting To Feel Real

by A Purple Life, posted in Countdown To Retirement, Early Retirement, Fitness, Investing, Keto, Taxes
This post may contain affiliate links. For more info read my disclosure.

Reality is setting in y’all. I feel similar to how I did right before we moved across the country without a house, job or knowing basically anyone on this side of the country. I had made the decision and I knew it was the right one, but it was still terrifying. I was leaving the best job I’d ever had behind, along with the best apartment I’d ever had and all the friends I’d made in my adult life. I was petrified.

Similarly, the imminent beginning of my retired and nomad life is starting to feel real and scary. All the AirBnBs are booked and my flights are locked in (mostly with points of course 😉 ). I’ve dedicated at least the next year of my life to being a nomad with these finalized plans. I’m curious to know if I will like nomad life as much as I think or if I will long for more stability. I’m curious to know if I will actually love the retirement schedule and ideal life I’ve dreamed of all these years.

So while I’m super excited, I also have what I think is a healthy amount of anxiety about changing my entire life. However, regardless of what I learn about myself, I also know that I have (hopefully) 70 years ahead of me to experiment and change my life according to what makes me most content.

So now let’s touch on another reason my anxiety has been spiking – everything I need to do!

MY RETIREMENT TO DO LIST

This is a monthly update on the items I need to accomplish before sailing into the sunset.

2020 Ongoing Goals

  • Max my 401K ($19,500) – $2,217 SAVED!
  • Set aside my Year 1 Retirement money in cash – $3,555 SAVED!
  • Max a Roth IRA ($6,000) – IN PROGRESS
  • Overall save $52,000 before I quit in September – $5,772 SAVED TOTAL!

I’ve only gotten one paycheck so far this year and I’m pleased with these numbers. My overall plan is to max my 401K before I leave in September ($19,500) while saving my first year of retirement cash ($20,000 total). I already have about $5,000 in cash and need to fill out the remaining $15,000. After that’s done, I’m going to switch my savings to max out my Roth IRA ($6,000) and then add to my taxable account ($11,000) for a total of about $52,000 saved before I quit.

February

  • Do my 2019 taxes with Credit Karma Tax – DONE & FILED!
  • Learn Spanish – PAUSED & REPLACED
  • Start reading books that have been sitting on my shelf forever before I donate them – IN PROGRESS
  • Play PC video games – IN PROGRESS
  • Change my withdrawal to 0 – CANCELLED
  • Schedule all the doctor’s appointments – DONE!
    • General practitioner for a check up and shots – DONE & EXAM COMPLETE!
    • OB/GYN check up – DONE & EXAM COMPLETE!
    • Eye exam – DONE!
    • Dental – DONE & EXAM COMPLETE!

Taxes

For my taxes, I had used the free Credit Karma Tax website to enter all my info last month, but being the curious nerd I am, I wanted to re-do everything by hand to make sure I understood what the website was doing. So I did that this month and submitted my taxes.

Heads up for any of y’all looking for a free e-file solution: Credit Karma Tax is currently free for all income levels for state and federal returns even if your taxes are complicated 😉 . This is my second year using this new service and I’m very happy with it. Unlike the tax prep services I’ve used in the past (Tax Act and TurboTax) they don’t try to trick me into saying it’s free, let me do all my taxes and then say JK it’s $50! It’s legit just free. I’m curious to see how long it stays that way, but for now I’m riding that gravy train!

The reason I was originally comfortable trying this new tax service is because I’ve actually been using the regular Credit Karma site for 8 years to check my credit score for free whenever I’m curious. I like to monitor what effect (if any) my travel hacking ridiculousness has on my credit score (Hint: It’s had no negative effect, but I’m nosey and love data).

Spanish

So my #1 goal during my last check in was to start learning Spanish well in advance of the month I will spend in Argentina in the fall. I was going to try all the recommendations people gave me for the best ways to learn a new language – one a week until I identified what works best for me and stick to that.

I started with the Fluent in 3 Months email course that sends emails with resources and tasks to do each day. Their shtick is that they get you speaking the language from day 1, even before you know much of anything. It was a cool twist on how I’ve learned languages in the past and I enjoyed it. It also definitely didn’t allow me to wait until I feel a sentence is perfect before speaking another language – I definitely don’t do that in English so I’m not sure why that’s my compulsion in a foreign language, but…it is. So that was helpful.

However, trying to learn a language daily while dealing with everything else in my life, such as work, my relationships and being a functioning human being has led me to put this goal on pause until retirement. I seem to have forgotten that I will have a lot more free time to sit on beaches and learn languages in just a few short months. Taking this off my plate for now has helped me breathe a little easier.

Another reason it might have been hard for me to maintain this level of commitment is that I have also been adding other items to my day, which I will be keeping up and which will be replacing my language learning for now.

These things include 15 minutes of daily meditation, getting back to hardcore keto and calorie counting, going on daily 1-1.5 hour walks and attending weekly free Zumba classes. All that plus learning a language was not working out well so I’ve decided to put Spanish on the back-burner and focus on these other lifestyle changes.

Reading

As for my book endeavor, I have actually started re-reading the few books I own in paperback (most are on my Kindle instead). I finished my first one and placed it in one of the mini libraries around our neighborhood! Now I just need to pick up the pace so I can get through all of them for one last re-read before we leave this apartment in July.

As for what books I’m reading, I must admit I can’t tell you 😉 . The only paperback books I keep are beach reads since I don’t want to get my Kindle sandy or wet (though I see they have a waterproof Kindle now and I am tempted to give into some lifestyle inflation…) What happens in beach reads stays in beach reads!

Gaming

I have been playing some of my beloved Sims (and that reminds me that I should do another livestream of it soon…). I also started playing a new game, Kentucky Route Zero, which started out really cool but in the end was a little too weird for me. I love point-and-click adventure games with a clear narrative and story like Gone Home or Tacoma so this wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I’m happy I tried something new. In between that I kept up my usual Sims ridiculousness. Check out a thread of my latest adventures here:

W-2 Withholding

After talking to our accounting department about the new way of withholding extra dollars from my paycheck (you can’t just tell them “0” anymore) and running some numbers, I’ve decided not to change anything with my W-2 and instead set aside money for taxes I might owe. My future taxes won’t be as much as usual since I am only working 75% of this year so I’m comfortable with this plan. And of course I’m not saying that just to not have to do an extra thing 😉 .

Doctor’s Appointments

I mentioned last month that I made all my doctor’s appointments, but this month I actually completed 3/4 of them! I was able to combine my general check up with an OB/GYN visit and knock most of this out at once while having a surprisingly amazing medical experience and enjoying this view:

March

  • Book my flight to Asia for 2021  – DONE!
  • Book the AirBnB we will live in during the month of September  – DONE!

Asia Flight

I booked my flight to Asia for 2021! It’s Singapore Air Business Class on the world’s longest flight (18 hours and 30 minutes). Once again, travel hacking to the rescue since that amount of time in a metal tube would sound like torture in a regular seat, but I’m actually super excited about this flight and living in luxury for almost a full day. Take a look at the ridiculousness that awaits:

September AirBnB

And finally I booked another month long AirBnB in a Seattle neighborhood we haven’t really explored before. This feels like we’re dipping our toe into being nomads in our city (just a different part of it) before taking on the rest of the world. Baby steps! This is also a fun milestone because I had now pre-paid our rent for August and September!

April

  • Transfer my HSA to the highly recommended Lively – DONE!
  • Start cleaning out our apartment and giving away/donating/selling items

HSA Transfer

I guess I got ahead of myself again. I put out a call on Twitter months ago where I asked for people’s recommended HSA provider. My own research had only found ones similar to what I was using, which was Payflex with their $5/month maintenance fees (plus high expense ratios and loads), lackluster customer service and a $1,000 minimum I must not invest while with them.

Anyway, the most often recommended HSA provider in this thread was Lively, which I hadn’t heard of before. I have now transferred my HSA to them and I can confirm they’re AWESOME! Set up was super simple and an account person reached out to me immediately with instructions for how to liquidate my Payflex HSA investments since trustee-to-trustee transfers only handle cash (I learned a new thing!).

I liquidated my Payflex assets and then had this happen:

Yikes. Thanks for solidifying why I’m leaving you in the first place people. Luckily I was able to contact them and they explained that the 1 business day I had been told for this liquidation to happen was incorrect – it was actually 3-5 business days AND within that time my money would temporarily disappear altogether from my account (thanks for the heads up guys…that seems like two important pieces of information to share…)

Anyway, my time with Lively has been smooth sailing so far. They sent me a Docusign form and are now taking care of everything with Payflex. They also have no maintenance fees and allow you to invest all of your money instead of leaving a thousand clams on the sidelines. Now I only wish I’d listened to my to do list and transferred this years ago to avoid the fees I’ve incurred…Oops.

June

  • Renew my driver’s license and get the new extended version that’s required in Washington state starting later this year
  • Get a Charles Schwab account for free international ATMs
  • Set up Traveling Mailbox
  • Buy a GoPro (or similar waterproof camera) for my Great Barrier Reef adventures

July

  • Get rid of basically everything I own 😬
  • Cancel my WiFi service and return the modem to the store
  • Transfer from Republic Wireless to Google FI
  • Decide how I’m dividing money across my bank accounts in retirement

August

  • Live in an AirBnB for a month!
  • Set up IMG global expat health insurance

September

  • Live in a (different) AirBnB for a month!
  • Give my notice at work!
  • Research the history and culture of all the places I’m traveling to this fall
  • (After my last day) Transfer my 401K away from my company

Looking Forward

So some solid progress is being made! This list is dwindling fairly quickly and that’s making me super happy to see. I’m going to keep whittling away at it in the hope that I can front-load some of the anxiety I know this major life change will bring me.

And here’s a reminder of what fun is to be had at the end of this to do list. 29 Mondays left…

How has the last month been for you? What goals do you want to accomplish this year?

28 thoughts on “6 Months To Retirement: This Is Starting To Feel Real”

  1. These are exciting times! I’m experiencing the same things right now so I can definitely relate to all the anxiety and planning that goes with it. I might take you up on the offer to meet in Thailand in 2021 😉

    Reply

  2. Woohoo!!! Knocking out so many items! Love that you allowed yourself the space to put learning Spanish on hold. Learning a new language intensively is suck a mental energy suck but doing it in that total “immersion/practice only speaking the language while learning it”, is absolutely the best way to make progress. You’ll have plenty of time to attack this goal in 6 months!!!

    Reply

    1. Right?! I’ve been surprisingly productive haha. And thank you – I felt a bit like a failure because I can’t remember the last time I cut a plan out of my life, but it’s definitely not the time to dive head first into learning a new language – there’s too much going on 🙂 . You’re totally right lady!

      Reply

  3. Nice job booking everything. That’s way earlier than I usually do it, but I guess it’s okay with points.
    No mention of the stock market? 🙂
    We’ll probably cancel our Thailand trip this summer and go a bit later. We’ll see how it goes.

    Reply

    1. What’s there to mention 😉 ? I talked about my stock market thoughts in my latest net worth update on Insta. Overall: meh! Are you shifting Thailand because of virus concerns? Just curious. We shall indeed see how it goes!

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  4. february was a pile of dung in le smidlap chateau. we had a fender bender, kidney stone, and the wild and crazy market. even with all that it was still a pretty good month in the grand scheme of what could go badly.

    the highlight of the post for me was the reference to dollars as “clams.” i’ve been using that one for years. my friend likes to call ’em frog pelts. you can withhold an extra set dollar amount for taxes in our system and it’s pretty easy and i don’t even have to talk to a human, which is nice. i think i have 30 clams a week extra taken out.

    Reply

    1. Yeah I’m sorry about your month Freddy. It sounded particularly rough, but I’m glad you have a optimistic mindset by trying to see the bigger picture. That’s a great way to be. And haha glad you enjoyed the “clams” – I love weird ways to describe money and since I mention it often on here I like it keep it interesting. I haven’t heard of frog pelts before! I’m going to look up its origins and add it to my arsenal!

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  5. Speaking of point & click adventure games, have you played Monkey Island and Broken Sword? I got both series for my husband for Christmas and we’ve been playing them together, as neither of us have played them since we were kids! They’re on Steam so you can take them with you in retirement 😉

    Reply

    1. I have not! Adding them to my list – thank you 🙂 . And yes I love Steam. Technically all the games we have are digital – they just won’t look as good on my little laptop (and it can’t render it nearly as well) so I usually play less if at all. Maybe I just need to get used to worse graphics 😉 .

      Reply

    1. Yeah I’ve done better than forecast on the to do list front! And thank you so much Penny! It’s awesome knowing you’re in my corner 🙂 .

      Reply

  7. Among all the wonderful details you’ve provided, my eyes couldn’t help but focus on one part… YOU’RE PLAYING SIMS AGAIN! I find it endearing that you manage to carve out a little silly fun while still being 120% on top of your adulting and pre-retirement obligations.

    Reply

    1. Haha yes I was inspired to play again thank goodness. It’s been too long. And you are WAY too kind to say I’m 120% on top of adulting – I definitely don’t even feel 100%, but I really appreciate the sentiment 🙂 .

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  8. I keep getting emails about $500 fares on American down to Buenos Aires this fall, so maybe it is a sign we need to go down there! But I am probably in a wait and see attitude on international travel with the coronavirus. We are already cancelling a family trip to Korea and Taiwan in April, and we are supposed to go to Italy and other parts of Europe in May/June, so who knows what will happen with that.

    I tried using Credit Karma for our taxes last year. In one of our index funds we had to pay international taxes (which are deductible). For some strange reason, Credit Karma only allowed those taxes to be up to $600. Anything above that and they couldn’t process the taxes. Of course, I didn’t find this out until filling out almost all of the information, so went with Free Tax USA instead. The joys of free tax prep!

    Reply

    1. $500?! What airline? Mine was $1000. Dang it! Fair point on changing travel based on this virus. Where are y’all going to hang out instead?

      And that’s super weird. I wonder if they fixed that this year. How annoying. I have yet to use Free Tax USA – I’ll add it to my list of possibilities. The joys indeed!

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  10. So excited for you. I know you’ve probably said before but I missed it, is your partner retiring at same exact time and going with you on all these travels?

    Reply

    1. Thank you! He’s not retiring yet, but is currently on a sabbatical and we’re working on getting him another remote job so he can come with me.

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  11. I tried Fluent in 3 Months recently too to try to learn French, but it is just so difficult with a full-time job, pets, relationship and everything else going on. I think you putting learning Spanish on the back-burner is a totally appropriate move–you will learn exponentially faster once you are in Argentina and completely immersed in the culture.
    In college, I studied in Japan for one year. Before moving there, I studied Japanese like crazy (through textbooks and watching shows), but that was nothing compared being immersed in the culture and being forced to speak Japanese on a day-to-day basis.
    Congrats on knocking out so many items on your to do list!

    Reply

    1. Yeah that sounds like a lot. And thank you! I think this was the first time I ‘failed’ at a goal and I was nervous to write about it to be honest, but we’re all human here. Gotta share my ‘fails’ along with successes. I’m with you on immersion! I want to have some basics down so I have a few phrases to pull from, but immersion is so powerful. I definitely learned way more in the 6 months I lived in an Italian town where the locals didn’t speak English than the prior 2 years when I had Italian class every day for an hour.

      That’s awesome you watched shows too to learn Japanese. I need to integrate that into my plan again later. And thank you!

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  12. This is exciting, APL! 6 months will go by in no time, so no wonder it’s starting to feel real. Looks like you’re making progress with your to-do list. I also love your photos. Seattle looks awesome and looks like a place I would like. I have always wanted to visit for the rain and for coffee, if that’s true lol. Let me know if you’re ever in Toronto 🙂

    Reply

    1. You might be right about that 😉 . Thank you – so happy you’re enjoying the photos. I’ll keep them coming. Seattle is indeed awesome – it’s my favorite US city. I think you’d like it 🙂 . Come visit! We have less rain than people say, but even more coffee haha. I’ll definitely let you know! I’ve never been to Toronto.

      Reply

  13. Hah I got a surge of anxiety just reading about the end coming up. I don’t do well with change, even other people’s sometimes 😀

    I was trying to ditch Kindle but a WATERPROOF one?? I uh … I might have to reconsider.

    I’ve got a lot of work to do on myself this year to see if it will help with my chronic stuff and I am a bit hopeful that it might.

    Reply

    1. Oh no – I’m sorry to cause you anxiety! I don’t deal well with change either haha. Deep breaths! And yeeeah it took me years to bite the bullet and get an e-Reader, but here I am eyeing the waterproof one like helloooo there lol. I would love to read in the pool.

      You got this! Good luck with your self improvement – I hope it helps a lot!

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  14. This is so exciting! So happy for you, and I am so thrilled to see all of the amazing places you’ll experience when you’re all set in September! Just curious, why are you switching to Google Fi? 🙂

    Reply

    1. Thank you! And yes look out for an influx of pictures on my Instagram haha. I’m switching because I’ll be in other countries for about half the year and want to have data globally and Republic Wireless doesn’t offer that at the moment.

      Reply

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