I stumbled upon Finance Junkie’s Plugged in Finance site today. It looks like the plan that I thought was so original – growing my passive income using Prosper.com as my main vehicle – is already being implemented.
Looking on his status, it appears that he’s much further than I am to getting out of the rat race. Because he is pretty close to my age, it stands to reason that I’ve got my work cut out. However, I went back to look at his first post and it seems we differ in accounting philosophies.
1) He is counting himself and his wife, where as I’m not involving my fiancee in my goal – at least for now.
2) If I did count my fiancee, I could add her military pension into the mix, but I don’t want to make that make that assumption at this point.
3) Stock and Bond assets. I’m not sure if he’s counting his retirement accounts, but I don’t want to add that in as I can’t access it without penalty until long after I’ve achieved my goal (I hope).
My point to all this is that retirement income can get added in when I get a lot closer to those years. I’ve got some time before that.
Thanks for the comments about my site. In regards to your third comment about stocks and bond assets, I recommend you look at:
http://www.smartmoney.com/retirement/ira/index.cfm?story=tapping
It details how you can start withdrawing money from an IRA penalty free before 59 1/2 so long as you annuitize the payments.
My TSP (military 401K) can be converted to an IRA with some paperwork and afterwards withdrawn from tax free following the rules from the smartmoney article.
Regards,
Steve