| 1/28/2024 7:19:15 AM 2Muchfun |
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| Sold 1 car |
| 1/28/2024 1:59:42 PM testertest98 |
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| I came across your profile on the main page.
If you don't mind, could you share your view on the "first decade of retirement"? I am thinking of retiring in a my mid-50s as well and have the rest of this decade to go.
Did expenses come in at the levels you expected (both the periodic kind and what you had planned for one-off / unexpected kind).
How did you manage medical insurance?
Did you change your investment mix or strategy?
Many thanks... |
| 1/28/2024 3:32:59 PM 2Muchfun |
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| Did expenses come in at the levels you expected (both the periodic kind and what you had planned for one-off / unexpected kind)? The quick answer is Yes, they were what we expected. Two years before we retired we started an envelope budgeting plan, similar to what Dave Ramsey teaches. We learned exactly what we spent on normal expenses. I also studied how much to put away for home repairs and other “bumpy” expenses that don’t come along every year. These included kids’ weddings, new AC units and new roofs. We opened a number of Capital One savings accounts to fill each month towards these occasional expenses. Since retiring, we have increased our withdrawals by 5% a year. The added amount has gone towards towards vacations/traveling. With us, we don’t want to get to the end of our lives and have saved too much. We are putting off taking SS until I am closer to 70.
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| 1/28/2024 3:33:16 PM 2Muchfun |
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| How did you manage medical insurance? We used the ACA (Obamacare) program. We don’t have a history of medical issues and chose to do a high deductible plan. This allowed us each to open an HSA account and put money away for any medical expenses. We ended up paying medical bills out of pocket and let the HSA’s grow. Our only income is from LTCG and dividends in our taxable account (~$20K annually) and thus, had a zero dollar premium. |
| 1/28/2024 3:33:33 PM 2Muchfun |
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| Did you change your investment mix or strategy? Yes. We started out with a 50/50 mix of Vanguard total US stock market, total international stock market and total bond market along with 2-3 years of cash in CDs and high yield savings accounts. Over time, we became more aggressive (and tired of paltry international returns and bond returns) and are now at a 95/5 mix (with only US stock market) and 3 years of cash. This is rare, I believe, for most retirees. Most are much more conservative than we are.
I hope this is helpful. Feel free to ask additional questions any time. |
| 1/28/2024 6:23:41 PM testertest98 |
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| Thanks very much for sharing (with quite a bit of detail).
The last 10 years have indeed been very anemic for International funds. I still have about 20% in International (developed and emerging) funds. But over this period I wish I had been more aggressive in moving cash into the market as it became available rather than "keeping dry powder" / or dollar cost averaging (upwards more than downwards).
I have never really invested in bonds (spare a bit in I-bonds when they spiked in return recently). 95-100% in equities seems like the right overall approach to me as well. Just need enough headroom so market gyrations don't become an issue.
ACA with a high deductible sounds good and is probably what we will end up doing assuming health stays on the current course.
The open question for us is to decide on where to settle down as our kids are still in high school...
Thanks again. All the best. |
| 1/29/2024 7:35:24 AM cloudcaster |
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| Adding my applause to this conversation as a whole, which is exactly the type of discussion I am craving from the successful people on this site. Thank you for asking the questions and the detailed real life answers. |
| 1/31/2024 11:48:41 AM auzzieyank |
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| @testertest90 - Track your spending and networth like this site with the empower online app, https://www.personalcapital.com/ |