Today I want to celebrate my Mom. This month is her 10 year retirement anniversary and I thought this would be a great time to reflect on her journey, and her decade of retirement. As I’ve mentioned a few times on the blog, my Mom was my main inspiration in starting my journey to financial independence.
She actually retired the same month I started writing this blog and she did so without investing in stocks until she was 40. And she still retired at 55 with 3 kids. In case you missed it, she has written two guest posts on this blog where she’s answered a lot of your questions:
Feel free to check out those posts to see my Mom’s full story and the questions she’s already answered. Today we’re going to jump into new questions y’all submitted when I put out a Q&A request on my Instagram. Take it away Mama Purple!
MONEY
How did she invest when she started investing?
It wasn’t until I was 40 that I started paying attention to my companies’ 401Ks and investing in general. Prior to that, I didn’t even invest in my company’s 401ks because I didn’t like the fact that I could not access my own money until I was 59 ½. Instead, I wanted to just save it myself in a savings account, which in retrospect was not a great idea.
But when I was 40 and working at a utility company, there was a huge push (aka bonuses attached for the executive leadership) to get everyone signed up for a 401K. So I had more and more people talking about it and the company offered a meeting with a “free” financial advisor. There was one woman on my team who felt comfortable talking to me about her own 401k and showing me its value (she was about 5 years younger than I was), she had already accumulated over $300K – that woke me up!
I became interested and started investing in the company 401k, but I still relied too much on the advisors offering suggestions on that investment “strategy.” Regardless, just continuing to put money into the 401k got me off to a good start and then my husband and I decided to invest more money outside of the 401k. That’s where we really got burned by so many financial advisors but yet still continued to save and invest (even in bad investments with high fees, but they still weren’t as bad as bank savings account rates).
I let a financial advisor choose a million funds that I didn’t really understand. I also didn’t know that they seemed to choose those funds because of their high expense ratios and commissions until my daughter pointed it out to me many years later. Once she showed me we were losing so much money to unnecessary fees, we moved everything to Vanguard like she had, and never looked back.
Did you go all in for stocks or did you include some bonds?
I’ve always had 50/50 stocks and bonds. We have never been risk takers when it comes to our money and 100% stocks seemed risky for us.
What index funds are you primarily invested in?
VTSAX just like Purple taught me 🙂 .
How much has her net worth grown in retirement?
It hasn’t. Because I have 50% bonds and have been withdrawing for expenses in retirement, it hasn’t really grown overall. Any growth has been eaten up by withdrawals.
When she was 40, did she invest a lump sum at the beginning or DCA over time?
I didn’t have a lump sum saved to invest when I started, so I used DCA (dollar cost averaging) as a default every time I got a paycheck. However, I believe in investing ASAP so if I got a bonus or something like that from work I put it into the market as soon as it hit my bank account.
JOBS
Does she ever miss having a corporate title? Does your Mom miss the feeling of making money?
No to both. Purple and I both hated Corporate America, never linked our self-worth to our work titles and also hated the feeling of our lives slipping away while we made money for other people and dealt with dumb office politics.
Did you have side jobs while working full-time?
I’ve had lots. In addition to my full time job, I was an online teacher at two different schools at night. I also tried starting a few businesses, but they never made any money.
Do either of you have a pension?
Purple’s Answer: *laughs hysterically* Absolutely not. The ad agencies I worked for don’t even offer sick days, they definitely don’t offer pensions.
Two of my companies offered pensions. One I took as a (small) lump sum and invested in Vanguard. The other sends me a few hundred dollars a month so it’s not exactly life-changing money 🙂 .
Do you both wish you had a little side gig to keep sharp & bring in a little more money?
Purple’s Answer: Lol – no. My Mom is where my love of laziness came from🥰. We stay plenty sharp without the unnecessary stress of a job in retirement and once we both saved enough money, we didn’t see the need to try and get more especially by trading the only thing we can’t get back: our time on this Earth.
What Purple said 🙂 .
RETIREMENT
Did you wait at all to retire or were you perfectly on time?
I waited a year after hitting my savings goals because my husband had just retired and I was worried about us both retiring at the same time. So 10 years ago I retired. I had drafted my quit letter beforehand and planned to send it the day after Christmas.
During the days leading up to Christmas I started emptying my desk little by little so no one would notice 😉 . Hilariously I shouldn’t have worried about that because my boss didn’t even reply to my resignation letter for a week. By that time I had one week left on my two weeks notice and the company was only just starting to rev up after the holidays. But by that time I was ready to hand off all my work and when my notice period was up I walked out the door…and it felt amazing 🙂 .
What are her favorite hobbies in retirement? How does she like to spend her time?
I love to travel, plan travel 🙂 and do word and picture puzzles.
I also love having new experiences with my daughter. I’m always looking for some type of unique excursion for us to do. We have already done hot air ballooning, dirt bike lessons, zip-lining, walking a half marathon, rock climbing, aerial yoga, Spanish immersion classes in México and lots of snorkeling at some of the most beautiful reefs around the world. I also love doing absolutely nothing while lounging in my pjs and watching dumb reality shows 🙂 .
What has been her favorite part about retirement? Does she feel like she is in her go-go years?
Traveling with my daughter while she’s also retired and finally not stressed about work has been my favorite part about retirement. In addition to that, I really enjoy random, spontaneous outings we do like me reading about a cool place, calling Purple and saying “Let’s go!”
As for go-go years, I feel like I’m actually in my slow-slow years because traveling has gotten harder on my body as I’ve aged. So we’re trying to take full advantage and do any strenuous travel as soon as we can.
A Purple Conclusion
And that’s Mama Purple everyone! I hope this gave you some insights into a 10 year early retiree who started later in life and (I believe) provides a solid example of how it’s never too late to improve your financial situation 🙂 .
If want more Mama Purple in your life, here are her other appearances:
Congratulations Mama Purple!!!
“No to both. Purple and I both hated Corporate America, never linked our self-worth to our work titles and also hated the feeling of our lives slipping away while we made money for other people and dealt with dumb office politics.”
1000000%. One of the reasons why I enjoy Purple’s blog so much is because you are a Unproductivity Advocate. I want to retire-retire, not retire to another side hustle 🙂 Nice to hear your mom was the inspiration!
Thank you! And I (Purple) am so happy to hear that 🙂 .
Your mom is an inspiration. Going from no investments to retired in just 15 years is an achievement!
It’s really cool that the two of you are traveling the world together. Is her budget similar to yours?
Yeah – she’s amazing and I’ll let her know you said that. And naw – she doesn’t share specific numbers online like me, but she has all the things I don’t that make budgets higher than mine: a house, cars, kids and pets 🙂 .
Tell Mama Purple she’s my inspiration! I too got a later start to investing and I too am planning to retire at 55 (in five years). She’s earned the right to do as little as she wants!
I read her this comment and she smiled and laughed and said “Thank you!”
Your mama is sweet. And I love the honesty. Everyone paints retirement in all kinds of glowing colors, she’s just a normal retiree, who learned from her own mistakes and is always looking for better ways and ideas. I absolutely love this. Happy retirement and keep us posted on all new income strategies 😉
She really is 🙂 . And yeah we’re both normal people that had to teach ourselves about finance and know we’re humans who make mistakes. And thank you! I don’t think there are any new types of income on the horizon, but will do lol!
Hello Purple and Mama Purple,
Thanks for posting this; you shared lots of good information. I have read for several years but like to keep social media low to none.
I read this posting and reread Mama Purple’s previous ones. Would the two of you consider her doing a guest post about her healthcare pre-Medicare, both on and off the Exchange? What plans she chose, did she use a broker, what would she do differently, what she’s happy she did?
Hi – thank you for reading. We’re honored you took the time 🙂 . I called my Mom to discuss your comment and she doesn’t currently think her approach is complicated enough to write a whole post about it, but here’s what she said:
“During my retirement planning process the going rate for health insurance was $500 per person per month so I budgeted $1K/month for my husband and I, but then when I actually retired the ACA had started so we did that. I chose the cheapest plan available from a company I had heard of for myself because all the deductibles were high (over $5K). However, my husband has specific doctors he goes to so I chose the cheapest of those that accept his doctors for him.
We weren’t getting any SS or pension at that time so we just had to make sure all our ‘income’ didn’t exceed the ACA threshold. That was our only benchmark until we reached Medicare age. I haven’t used a broker – I actually don’t know what that is. So that’s what I did – there was no real science to it and I’m happy with my choice. I wouldn’t change it in retrospect.”
Thank you both for your quick response.
By broker, I meant an “independent” insurance broker as opposed to calling a health care company directly or picking from the Exchange companies on your own. I put that in parentheses because my impression is that many of the brokers get kickbacks from the healthcare companies.
I hope you continue to enjoy your trips and time together!
No problem 🙂 . And oh ok – good to know. Thank you!
I just don’t understand your “lazy” comments, Purple. When I read your own end-of-year wrap-ups about everything in the year that you saw and did, watched and read, and/or taught yourself, I feel exhausted. You accomplish so much.
Hmm that’s an interesting perspective. Thank you 🙂 . I guess the amount of ‘stuff’ I do now compared to when I was working is like 5% so I think it’s not a lot. However, almost all of the things I did were work related and would be super boring to write about in a post 🙂 . I also spend a lot of days reading a book on the couch all day without really moving so I think of that as a wonderfully lazy day. But fair point – I’ll work on doing less 😉 .
Thank you, mama Purple. Oof, those financial planners! I’m glad they didn’t slow you down tooo much.
I loved reading all of this Q&A!!! YAAS. Bravo to Mama Purple! This is the kind of content we all need to read. So many people think that just because they’re in their 40s or 50s that they can’t save enough for retirement and that they are doomed to keep working for The Man until 75 or 80 or until they can’t work anymore. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Reading about how your mom started investing at 40 and was about to retire by 55 is incredibly inspiring and motivating. Thank you, Purple, for sharing this and please give my kudos to your awesome mom!
Yay!!! We’re so happy to hear that 🙂 . Thank you for reading!
It’s so nice to hear about your relationship with your mom and all of the travel adventures together. Definitely looking forward to spending more time with my mom in retirement 🙂
Thank you – I’m really lucky 🙂 . And that’s awesome – it’s a huge perk of retirement!