I don’t want advice from you lol. No kids? Pathetic. Your accounts and house? Not impressive.
I don’t want advice from you lol. No kids? Pathetic. Your accounts and house? Not impressive.
I finally did my calculation for my SS and was shocked.
I don't really need to save anything at all. SS will probably be double my basic needs and my extraneous expenses like travel will be much less than it is now because I've already seen most of the places I've wanted to see in the world. I really just need time to read and write and listen to music with a cup of coffee out on the porch to be happy now. Go to the beach or go see live music once in awhile. Hang out with family. Life is good and doesn't cost that much once your house is paid off.
I'll keep putting money in my 401K up to the point my employer matches, because why not, but it really made me wonder why are there always tons of threads about people making tons of sacrifices just make sure they have some huge nest egg at the end of their life? I'd rather enjoy life.
If you have a house paid off and a couple hundred thousand in retirement account to supplement SS, you will be fine. I'll probably sell my house and move to some nice cheap place overseas as soon as I turn 62.
The thing people forget to do is practice for retirement. They dedicate their life to saving up for it and then have no idea how to relax and enjoy life once it arrives.
Passive Investor wrote:
37 year old (married, no kids)
House Value: $1,600,000 (conservatively). We owe $430K at 2% interest rate on 15 year mortgage with 13 years remaining. We are not going to pay that off early given the low rate. So call it roughly $1,150,000 in equity.
Retirement Accounts: $1,400,000 (about $800K of that is in Roth accounts); Note that this is roughly an even split of $700K each for my wife and me. Investments split 60% in VTI, 20% in VXUS and 20% in BND.
Investment Account: $750,000 (60% in VTI, 20% in VXUS, 20% in VWITX)
Checking: We keep $20K in our checking account. Both of our paychecks go into this account, and we move whatever amount above $20K at end of month into investment account.
How did we get to where we are today? Put simply, a lot of hard work. Top undergrad, top MBAs, IB/PE/Consulting jobs working 80+ hours per week before moving into VP+ positions in corporate world. Also, passive investing in broad market index funds with very low fees. Home has appreciated about $600K (conservatively) since we purchased it. We max out our retirement accounts every year. We don't buy fancy watches, clothes or expensive dinners, but we do splurge on nice vacations (probably spend about $20K on vacations each year). I'm sure that not having kids has probably helped us reach the numbers above too. That decision wasn't about money... just a personal choice in that we didn't really want kids. Lastly, the money is shared and all goes into one joint account... we don't keep separate accounts (except for retirement accounts where required) based on who makes more / less (although recently we are both at similar income levels).
If I had one piece of advice it would be to put as much into your retirement accounts in your 20s as possible. Second would be to invest in passive index funds with low fees, and don't chase individual stocks (google Boglehead if you want to learn more on that style of investing).
Cool.
One thing to consider is at your age, you may want find yourselves reconsidering your choice to not have kids. At your age the wife and I didn't want to, either. But in our early 40's she had a change of heart, and I went along with her wishes.
It took a couple of years but sure enough we have what turned out to be our only child.
The thing is, it turned out to be the most important things in our lives. I don't know how to express what i brought us except to say, if your life is 100% now, this could make it 150%, It just made it that much more.
The money - that is just a resource that enables us to live our lives. But it's up to us to make that life all it might be. And it sounds like you have the wherewithal to be able to navigate it well and take on this adventure if you want to.
You're choice, and left to my own devices, I wouldn't have had kids. But I did, and I can't imagine what I would have missed if I hadn't been persuaded to have one.
28 & married. We have about 130k saved us total for retirement. Basically we have just been saving 15% of our income every month into retirement. Lived off my income for 3 years while she was in law school.
Sorta shocked by these high numbers on this thread. We're playing some "catch up" I guess you could say now that she's out of school. Anecdotally my wife and I have much more in savings than our family/friends.
On track to hit about 7 million by retirement age (67) with current deposits, assuming a 7% return. That coupled with SS sounds like more than enough.
midwest dinks wrote:
28 & married. We have about 130k saved us total for retirement. Basically we have just been saving 15% of our income every month into retirement. Lived off my income for 3 years while she was in law school.
Sorta shocked by these high numbers on this thread. We're playing some "catch up" I guess you could say now that she's out of school. Anecdotally my wife and I have much more in savings than our family/friends.
On track to hit about 7 million by retirement age (67) with current deposits, assuming a 7% return. That coupled with SS sounds like more than enough.
You're not catching up, you're just younger than most. With your wise conservative strategy you won't need to worry at all. Well done!