If I won the lottery I’d retire immediately. Mrs. L wants to keep working, though.
Then there are these guys. Who can save 75% of earnings?!
I semi-retired at 46, to part-tine, then fully at 51. Went on hiatus a few times before that.
Also retiring w $1M at 30 isn’t retiring. It’s long vacation followed by a job hunt when the money runs out (or they need healthcare). Although the article does say they have a few rental properties and part time gigs
We did. Actually closer to 80% during the first 3 years we were married. We decided it was important enough to live a drastically limited lifestyle in order to get a jump start on life. Having no family money or inheritance/etc. this was the only option we could see.
I worked offshore rigs in the far flung parts of the world while mizpullin lived like a starving monk in a tiny apartment. She paid the few bills on her bank-teller’s income while mine was banked/invested. This entailed selling one of our cars, living a very basic lifestyle, no cable, no frills and only seeing each other at six month intervals. After 3 years of this, we had a substantial net worth, and were both able to complete our degrees and launch careers with no debt at all. It’s difficult to describe how much easier life is when you have several years of income set aside to smooth any bumps. It’s like changing the settings to “easy” mode.
This always killed me “We’re retired- but we are managing 15 rental properties and have a few side gigs.” IOW, doing a different kind of work. Although the article does put it slightly more accurately later on and describe them as “retired from teaching” ( which I still don’t think s entirely accurate)
Speak for yourself. $1-million at 5% is $50,000 a year forever, more than I ever made annually.
Right, but with their age they’d expect to live 40+ years longer. In 45 years, with inflation, $50k income would be worth about $10k income in 2065 dollars, definitely not something you could live on.
And don’t they have to pay taxes on the $50K when they withdraw it from whatever account that is giving them 5% interest? And what type of account can actually guarantee 5% interest for 40 years?
With a proper mix of investments you can get 5%* over the long term, but that’s over the long term. There will be years (or multiples of years) over decades the returns are less or even negative. If they were working they’d just live on their paychecks and wait for investments to recover. But they’re not working, so they must pull out money even in a down market, which will impact the nest egg.
*Also 4% withdrawal rate is a more likely “the money lasts forever” strategy, but it depends on your optimism.
Yes, but it’s complex. They accumulated $1M over eight years, so a chunk of the nest egg is after tax dollars, so no tax due, and a chunk is gains from investments so withdrawals are taxable. Over decades the $1m amount would be more and more made up of investment gains, so every year taxes on that $50k would go up until pretty much every withdrawal was taxable.
It’s said that at the time the article was written were earning $13K/mo in rents and had only $2K/mo in mortgages. Of course, there are other expenses to rental properties, and presumably they pay a property management company to see to the day to day running of the business. But still, even $6K/mo is very livable.
I’m 59. I’m just biding my time until I qualify for Medicare. Currently I’m saving 1/2 my income, my farm is paid off and my rental property is bringing in almost double the mortgage, which will be paid off around the time I retire. My thought is if I ever get to the point where I can’t manage the farm and horses, I can move into town into my rental house.
StG
This is what I saw with my father. His only outside interest (besides family) was riding his motorcycle (a big road bike). But arthritis in his hips had curtailed even that. He absolutely did not know what to do with himself after retirement. My mother, on the other hand, never ran out of interesting stuff to do after she retired: volunteer work, gardening, art work, compiling the family genealogy.
About two years ago, I went through the “I don’t want to retire” thing. I am definitely over it now. Just counting down the months, waiting to maximize my pension. I will be like my mom: I’ll never run out of stuff to do. There are too many weeds to pull, plants to plant, books to read, paintings to paint, horses to groom, to ever be bored.
Ok, I’m six months into retirement as of today and I’m not even a little bit bored. There are still a million interesting things I want to do (or read) that I haven’t found time to do yet. It may be a gift that some of us are just born with, the ability to never be bored (as long as people write interesting stuff, I’ll have something to do).
I will note, however, that for the first time in our 30 years at our current house, my lawn and shrubbery have never looked better. Not because I like the work any better - yuck - but because I now have the time to go outside and do an hour or so’s worth of chores whenever the weather is decent. Instead of cramming the bare minimum into the weekend like I’ve always done before.
My friend Mike retired at 55(?) back in January. He recently applied for a job at a local brewery, so now he’s pouring beer two or three evenings a week. It is a dream come true for him, working with beer.
Then, he took another part time job at a local store. When kids went back to school the store had several openings, so Mike took them all. He is now working more hours a week than he did prior to retirement.
I’m 71. This is my second year as a professor emeritus. I’d still be a professor if not for the cancer. I just couldn’t keep up. I now teach one course a year. That’s the most I’m allowed to. (I suppose that’s the most they’re allowed to pay me for. I doubt they’d stop me from informally lecturing or running a seminar, at least in absence of our COVID restrictions.)
I don’t miss the meetings, but I do miss the rest. But then as a professor much of the time you’re doing what you’d like to do.
Do you still do research or write articles?
I’m 69. I said I would retire when my mother died (she passed away last month in an expensive nursing home and I continued working to keep her there rather than go into Medicaid when her money ran out–we were approaching only 18 more months funding). I’m now in grief, and thinking of retiring. Then last week someone approached me as a consultant for a project. I’m a specialist in a narrow engineering area and I’m contacted a couple of times a year for weird projects that need review or have run into a problem. I love these. So I think I may hold off retiring.
As my post was just above this, I assume you are asking me. I’m writing a PhD level text book (probably for the rest of my life). It will be available on line but never be published in hard copy as that (1) is a pain and (2) will mean I’m finished.
I’m still working at a much slower pace on some research.
Never. Lost my job at 45, worked part-time for the next seven years, fullly retired when I qualified for disability at 52 and headed straight for South America.
Geographic arbitrage? Or is it somewhere you wanted to live anyway?