What age are you planning to retire? What do you plan to do after retirement? What are you doing to get there?
Planning to quit by 40 and live a life of peace and quiet in Mediterranean Europe, where I was born and raised. Will spend my time napping, staying close to my aging parents that I really hope will still be alive by then, doing lots of outdoor activities, reading like a maniac, programming for fun, and never have a boss again for God sake.
7-8 years ago I was in the camp of those who thought they’d never retire, my passion for the industry and technology was too real. Well, Corporate America got the best of me and now I can’t wait to get out. Interesting to introspect how I changed over the years.
The main take-away for me is that people tend to over-save for retirement because they a) over-estimate how much they'll want to do in their 70s and 80s and b) underestimate the opportunity cost of saving when they're younger.
In any case, it prompted me to do some calculations around retirement. We could afford to retire early-mid 50s provided we were willing to save aggressively then sell our home and downsize at retirement. In reality, we'll still have teenagers at home at that point, so it's not so practical to downsize. Plus, my wife's career is starting to ramp up and be more interesting, so she'd probably want to work past 50, anyway.
Long story short, we're aiming at something like 60-65, maybe transitioning to fewer days/week over the last 5 years. The kids will have left home, our investments will have had 10-15 more years to grow, which means we can spend more now rather than be in hard-core savings mode.
As to what we'll do? Very likely sell our main residence, move to our place at the beach, have lots of time for the kids and (maybe) grandkids and do a lot of what we already do, just moreso: read, work out, hang out together, and occasionally travel.
One of the perks of academia. You can retire, but prevent boredom.
Before going completely off the rails your last couple of years will be co-publishing papers with ChatGPT and getting listed as 2nd author.
No no, you're not thinking far enough in the future. Give it enough time and there won't be any more snow!
So my plan is not to retire, per se. As I become more and more financially independent, I'm simply going to tailor the work that I do and the time that I spend on it to match whatever my desires are. No working on boring projects because it pays well, etc.
In my perfect world, which I will admit is a fetch, one of my side projects will get traction and I'll make enough to pay for a further two decades of unprofitable-but-fun projects. Or I'll win the lottery I don't buy tickets for.
It really helps that I enjoy coding and could happily do it until I croak, I don't consider it work. I keep getting roped into management though.
I say the same, and I joke that I'm only slightly more delusional than the folks who play and think they can win
If someone asks, I also like to say that the odds of finding a winning powerball ticket on the ground are not significantly different from the odds of buying one yourself.
I can't back that up with real statistical modeling or anything, but given that the best odds are north of 1 in 200 million, it's close enough.
So not much difference from working at IBM?
I mostly have fond memories of those days. That was a different IBM than today. Back then when they moved you to another office across the country, IBM would buy your current house from you at market price so you could easily make the move and buy a new house where you were going. My dad did that a couple times before landing permanently in Portland.
[0] speaking of the picnics, I recall the joke about how the PCjr was created. The engineers and sales folks were very competitive, and during some heated talk at a picnic, the sales folks boasted that they were so good they could sell *anything* the engineers could dream up. Engineer reply: "Wanna bet?"
We had a PCjr ourselves. They gave them out to employees for peanuts.
I have almost come to terms with I just need to live now and stop the voices of all the people that put this shit in my head for the last 40 years of "oh just do X and it's easy to retire! then that's when you life can start!". Life was completely different when I grew up- people had jobs with pensions, healthcare was all in, education was cheap.
But it's hard to push that shit away in your head. Plus I don't trust financial markets worth a damn. I work in the industry, this entire concept of "investing" that the rich have shoved into the middle class is absolutely disgusting and not the way the world should work.
So there's that.
A fail is not planning at all besides the money side of things. I know of people that have retired and are financially sound but without a clue of what they'll do next. The are bored all day and end up looking to get back into the workforce, at least part time.
Yep, once you have the financials figured out, you really need to spend some time focusing the life you're retiring to, instead of the work you're retiring from.
Overall I expect that I should be able to happily draw $140,000+ a year during retirement and have that NEVER run out. My wife is a teacher and should be able to pull $40,000-50,000 during retirement as well. Medical would be taken through her retirement plan. Household income between $150,000 and $200,000 during retirement.
Honestly? I don't want to retire. Why would I? I love working on computers, from my basement office and working remotely is great. I have a kid, I would expect to take 2-3, months off a year for less money, but that's not a problem to me.
What would I do with retirement? Clean my house more? walk my dogs more? travel more? Maybe? Work is great and just find something / someone you like working for, have enough fuck you money to not care if you get fired and the rest is gravy.
I think I'm far more likely to leave the programming career (web development) and pursue a masters in something like quantum computing or physics than I am to retire.
I would invest up to the matching in a 401k up to the limit, and then invest in some good tech companies for long term gains.
I generally feel the same way, but even in my mid-30s I've noticed that my energy levels have definitely trended downwards over time. And I'm doing all the right things: eating healthy, exercising, using standing desk, etc. Nothing too extreme at this point, but I also notice this trend in older relatives and coworkers, so the possibility of this happening to me seems very real and worth planning for.
If it does, there will be a point where I don't have enough energy to put into a full-time job plus everything else I need to do to live, and so it'll make sense to retire then. And if I end up feeling just as spry as I do now in 40 years, then sure why not just keep working?
These are wild figures. Most adventurous rules of thumb are about 4-5% over inflation. If you have a way to be confident in getting 7-9% pa over 30 years quit your day job and pile your time into whatever that secret is.
Then you’re pulling out 4% + fees a year which is also around the point of confident adventurousness. Many now say 3-3.5% including fees.
Good luck to you.
Here's one source that supports the 7-9% range over the last 30 years: https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/average-stock-market-retu....
1920 to 2022: 7.38% (adjusted for inflation) https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/1920?amount=1...
1989 to 2022: 7.4% (adjusted for inflation) https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/1989?amount=1...
My house is paid off (bought in 1999, paid extra each month, just paid it off a couple of years ago (30-year mortgage paid off in 23 years)) and both of my kids will be finished with college in the summer of 2030, so that gives me around 8 years to save up. I'm not putting any faith in my 401k or any investments. If they pan out, then cool, but having cash-in-hand when I retire is much more comforting.
After retirement, I plan on staying un-injured and not falling for any money-stealing scams for as long as possible. I'll write software when I feel like it. I'll experiment with new tech if and when it's cool enough to pry myself away from chatting up my fellow retirees and drinking excessively.
After I do that for a while, I'll enjoy the world and what it has to offer. Whatever that means, with whatever savings is still available.
Anything you're waiting to do until retirement you should be doing now. Common example, many people dream about traveling when they retire. When retirement comes they're typically in their 60's and may have health issues preventing them from traveling.
Do you think you're going to pick up a cool new hobby in your retirement? Why not pick up that hobby now?
Do you think you're going to have more time to spend with family and friends? Why aren't you spending more time with your family and friends now?
Stop pushing all these things off "when I retire" and start doing them now. After all, many people don't even live to see retirement. It'd be a shame to have died before you ever started living.
If circumstances arise in which I decide that retirement is a good option, I will live pretty much the same way that I do now, except that I may undertake less activity at someone else's behest. I say "may" rather than "will" because I already do some work pro bono because people ask me to help them with something.
When I retire, I'll probably piddle around with open source projects, a small saas business, or writing apps for niche platforms (XR, smart watches, etc). I'm not opposed to 'working for the man' but I'd only do that 2d / wk max, and few employers would be open to that. Throw in some slow travel and remote boondocking in addition to my normal books, games, and movies, and that sounds lovely.
I'm a bit over halfway to my goal. I've passed the point where I need to work to survive, and I've even started setting aside a 'fun money' budget. The hard work was done in my 20's and 30's. I just keep throwing money into index funds and sailing towards the finish line.
A quick wish list of things I'd love to do when I retire (of course this is a long ways away right now, so it's very tentative): - Focus more on exercise and health. - Hike and camp more, and enjoy the beautiful parks the U.S. has to offer. - Motorcycle around, maybe go on long road trips. - Connect with my kids more, and help them with their own kids. - Be more social, and have people over more often. - Keep contributing to open source. - Cultivate my drawing and writing skills - Maybe move to Europe for a bit. I love the idea of living in someplace like the Irish countryside, with their beautiful culture, history, and landscape.
I'm not really into the sit-around-doing-nothing type of retirement though; I live in a touristy place with a bunch of those types of people, and it really does seem like many are just waiting around until they die, and it's kind-of depressing. I'm hoping to exit the globally-competitive software engineering field within the next few years and focus on a long-term sustainable local business until my body breaks down decades later.
My plan is to make sure I retire somewhere in this country there is fresh water and hopefully some protection from food shortages. Probably near the Great Lakes.
- be working a maximum of 6 hours as a software engineer;
- and start working as a teacher.
At 50 I want to be working 100% as a teacher and only stop when I no longer have physical or mental conditions.
That’s my retirement plan.
But given my family history, it's not ha-ha funny insomuch as 50/50.
It may be bad for the person who finds me, but think how I'll feel.
Plan on retiring before 40.
> What are you doing to get there?
Maxing all retirement accounts, putting leftover money into taxable accounts, and letting compound interest do it's thing.
> What do you plan to do after retirement?
This is definitely an open question, and I sometimes feel uncomfortable when I think about it. Saving for retirement is my life goal and when I achieve it, I bet I will soon feel empty. That multi-decade challenge that took thousands of hours will be completed, and now what? I don't know how I am going to fill my weekdays for another possibly 50-60 years. It will be a great problem to have, I just don't have a solution yet.
This assumes a 4% withdrawal rate per year.
Initially at least I want to be able to pay off a mortgage and own my own house, so that whatever retirement ends up being, will have to be much less.
I'm living somewhat frugally (but not with a particular budget), working in a high pay field, and not planning on having children unless I marry a wealthy spouse that enables me to achieve these goals despite the added cost of children.
Still, realistically probably not until at least 45-50 since I started saving relatively late (around 30).
Travel, skiing and climbing as long as my body lets me, and bug my kids wherever they will be.
Investing in 401K and others including real estate.
If you don’t own your home, you ain’t retiring.
No use planning beyond that. When the time gets closer in a few decades, we'll see where the world is, how much money I have, what my life is like.
My current retirement plan is to work outside of academia until I die.
I want to retire early in my 50s, travel and find where I’m supposed to be in this world. I want to be open to whatever bumps into me.
I give it 5 years of searching and if I don’t find anything, my other half wants us to open a donkey sanctuary.
I will work less for sure. Taking regular breaks and working mostly in the mornings.
Probably gonna play pétanque in the evening or taking my grandchildren to the park or wherever they want to go.
I haven't been able to purchase a home due to medical debt and the market conditions when I entered industry and the subsequent surges in home prices, so that's a large part of it, and I'm far too old where a bank will be comfortable giving me a thirty year mortgage, so my options are to rent or be homeless. That's a large part of it.
I implore you, if you're under the age of 30, buy a home now. Eat ramen for several years if you have to. Otherwise you will never retire.
If you're 42 now, you're in no sense too old to get a 30 year mortgage - who told you that? In any case, it's literally illegal under Federal law to use age as a factor when making a credit decision.
A bank would be delighted for a mortgage holder to die, causing the property to be sold and the loan to be repaid, if prevailing interest rates had risen since the loan was created.
It's very sad that OP has been under the impression that age has anything to do with a loan term.
They don't, it is illegal on the federal level to use age as a factor when determining eligibility for most loans (including mortgages) in the US. Check the "must not discourage you from applying or reject your application [...] based on these factors" section of this page[0] on the FTC website.
That concern about age is just how the parent comment imagines it works, without checking how it actually is first.
0. https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/mortgage-discrimination
You keep cash in your mattress or what? You worked and lived through one of the greatest bull runs in history, did you really not put a penny into a 401k or IRA??
I wouldn't assume this, you can always try. The criteria will be based on your income and savings and the cost of the home at the time of the mortgage. You may need to move to a lower cost of living area than wherever you are now, though.
This is the whole problem with those who disappeared from the workforce due to COVID. There is a shortfall in tax receipts so governments are trying to figure out ways to force folk back into the corporate machine.
To obey some societal expectations?
The "you should have a job and it should give you meaning" thing is the societal expectation that needs the most interrogation.
Honestly, of there's anything you love well enough to become passably good at it, to me it makes more sense to keep doing that, making money or no money, than to sit around and do nothing.
Even if your "work" is the "personal work" of growing to understand cultures and becoming a more grounded, well-rounded human being while traveling the world, there are always opportunities to add value and receive that back in money.
"Retirement" as most people seem to mean it, just sitting around waiting to die, sounds so bleak by comparison to finding something you love to do.
That's exactly how I see it. I can't fathom why one would willfully chose to do that, barring serious illness or injury (and even then, why spend your precious time waiting for death instead of being the change you want to see in the world?)
Man, I'm sorry, there's just so much wrong with this take. You should seriously hang out with more retired people if you think they're just 'sitting around, waiting to die'.
I really take issue with the fact that we're expected to sell our 40 best years of our lives to work on things we're not passionate about to make other people rich.
Retirement, for me, is simply crossing the point where you work on your own terms for passion and purpose instead of money.
Our plan was always to work until the children leave high school, at which point we will not be tied to the school district and can move wherever we want. Our mortgage will be paid off around the same time. When the children are out of the house, we will decide whether to sell the house or rent it, but regardless, our plan is to move somewhere else, probably outside of the US in a place that has a lower cost-of-living than our current location. Predicting where that will be now is a little short-sighted, but if it were to happen today, it would most likely be Portugal or Costa Rica (two low-cost, warm, expat-friendly locations). Based on our projections, we won't be rich, but we also will not have to worry about money.
I put "retired" in quotes because I may go back to work. I am in no rush, and I do a little consulting here and there, but I left work to spend more time with my kids and 9 months out of the year, I have a lot of time during the day when I am not doing that. Also, it makes my wife jealous and I want her to still love me.
For those thinking about retirement, the two biggest things that worked for us was paying ourselves first (max out tax-advantaged investment accounts, invest them in run-of-the-mill dividend-paying equities, and leave them alone) and making a profit every month (living below our means, although some months may not be profitable, every year is). Those profits do not include the money you put into investments. We chose stability where possible (almost no job hopping in favor of constant growth within our current jobs, a house in a good school district and then working on it rather than hopping to a new one), and making decisions in light of the overall goal -- retiring when the kids are out of the house.
But, let's be clear, we are very fortunate. We have had a lot of things go our way. We have a lot of advantages that not everyone has. What we find acceptable, not everyone does. What works for us may not work for everyone else.
If you dont have kids, probably you will die alone in a hospital.
Also if you arent a programmer/doctor on that fat salary (or own a business) there is high possibility that you will have to work until you die, or that you "retire" and watch your account balance sink just to pay the bills. Perhaps if you have investments you can cope with this.
What is a problem for me is that I couldnt find a company where I can become a "lifer". I had long tenures here and there, but somehow work could never become cozy. You know the one where you work at say 70% capacity and can deal with life. I always end up working at 140% capacity. And at some age you should be the guy who "worked here for 10+ years and knows everything/everyone" and works ar 70% capacity. Otherwise the grind will simply kill you. Work at age of 65-70 is very scary. Probably we will have to work at 72 or more, if we are alive then. Realistically the older you get the slower you become, you get various ailments, so keeping that difficult job will be hard.
So if you care about retirement probably should work out more now. To be in shape.
Also Im trying to find a job (even tried on HN), but there is no market for people working in finance from EU. Of course there is "market" for basic jobs, but not the one that lets you retire earlier. Maybe few lucky ones become venture capitalists or CFOs (I try to do the latter very hard). For rest it is just the grind that sucks the life out of you. The retirement age will probably be increased, so you have 2-3 years, you will get sick and then die. Very bleak.
If you plan for retirement join a gym now. And build an extensive network of friends with whom you can chat. Maybe buy a house in some woods/community so you can drive there, rest, do some gardening and chatting with neighbours.
Old people like houses in the woods for a reason - those places run at a lower pace and provide ability to meet similar people. What is the alternative for most? Rot in front of TV or computer. Maybe go to meetups.
Of course there are outliers. For example you can become a teacher and teach kids programming or Excel (I think Excel will still be there when Im old). Or paint / write / repair cars & do a million other stuff. But if you dont like do those hobbies now, you probably wont do them (nor like them) when you are old.