One of the things I’m trying to work on is not putting things off for retirement. If there’s something that I want in retirement – I ask “Is there a way to bring it more into my daily life now?” My main driver for retirement is to spend A LOT MORE time with the people I love. And not just more time, but less distracted, more focused and less tired time. Continue reading “Bringing Retirement Into Now: A Visit From Mom”
My Mom recently told me a story about myself that I completely don’t remember, but SPOILER ALERT: I’ve always been this way y’all. Apparently my dreams of retirement were not born out of frustration after job hopping once a year and finding more ways that traditional work is incompatible with the life I want to lead. Here’s the proof. This is an interaction between 10 year old me and my uncle: Continue reading “What Do You Want To Do When You Grow Up?”
2 years, 4 months until I retire. That timeframe at once sounds short because I began this journey thinking this goal was 10 years away. And it is at once long: multiple years – almost two and a half more years of this. This stress, this tiredness, this sense of ineffective wastefulness. I know I have the cushiest job situation I’ve ever had, but 2.4 years still feels like a long time. However, looking back at what I was doing 2.4 years ago I remember it vividly like it was not that long ago.
Time is strange. My partner asked what my current timing is and his response to “2 years, 4 months” was “WOW that’s soon!” I found this interesting since I had the opposite reaction. “Goodness that’s far away.” I guess that’s the weirdness of time distortion. Let’s see how it feels when I get there.
My recent trip to Singapore was the first vacation in years that was more than a week chilling on the beach. The last similar trip I had was exploring Europe – mostly alone – for 2.5 weeks. Usually my Mom is interested in being in a luxury bubble and not actually learning about or exploring the local area. Singapore was different and it gave me an unexpected and unique insight into my life in retirement. Continue reading “A Retirement Prequel”
Something shocking happened at work. I was hosting an event to share recent vacation pictures with the group. Our other presenter had recently spent a month in Mexico. He even wrote a blog post for our company about how to successfully work from anywhere. He used 2 weeks of PTO to basically work half time and extend his time there. Their main goal for the trip was to look into buying a house near Puerto Vallarta. Continue reading “Early Retirement Dropped At Work”
I seem to change my mind annually about my retirement date – not just when it is based on math, but if I even am locked into a date or a number. Once again I’ve changed my mind 🙂 . As I’ve mentioned, current numbers including my raise show me solidly retiring in 2020 assuming average market growth and the same amount of stretch bonus as I received last year. If I continue to receive a 4% raise each year (as my boss claimed we would) my date is at the beginning of November with 7% market returns, October with 8% and mid-August with aggressive 10% growth. Continue reading “Locked Retirement Date: October 2, 2020”
I got a raise! And not just a cost-of-living increase of 2%, but a REAL raise of 4%! I’m assuming that’s just on my base salary so I’m going from $90,000 base to $93,600 with a guaranteed $10,000 target bonus and $600 for my cell phone. Without any stretch bonuses I’m up to $104,200! Continue reading “A Raise (And What It Means for Retirement)”
As part of my many retirement charts I’ve created one that shows visually how much I’ve saved in $10,000 increments. The market is already going gangbusters in 2018 (though who knows how long it will last) and as a result without any paycheck I have more than $250,000. Originally I was just excited to fill in another bubble on my visual net worth sheet and enthralled by the fun of thinking about having “a quarter of a million,” but I just realized something: $250,000 is half of what I need to retire. I’m halfway there! That’s crazy! And based on the magic of compound interest my money will keep working for me and start earning money faster than I can. It looks like I’m halfway to retirement money-wise and less than halfway in regards to time: 2 years and 11 months to go!