I thought I’d switch things up this week and write about our retirement plan for the future. It’s going to be detailed, so I’ll have an article one day each week.
I need to get a few things out of the way:
- Retirement planning at age 32 is a shot in the dark – Unless you really have tons of money it’s hard to plot a course for where you might be in 10 years. You think you have a plan and something could speed up the target date or slow it down right in a hurry. Still it doesn’t hurt to get things out there and make adjustments as life does what it does…
- Luck will be a factor – I know it’s impossible to plan for luck. However, as you read where we are now, you may be jealous about previous luck that we’ve had. I don’t argue that we’ve been lucky to put us in the position we are. However, a lot of planning went into it as well. One of my readers has his e-mail quote as, “Luck is the residue of design” (Branch Rickey) and I believe that to be true here.
- Annoying vs. Motivating – A friend of mine has a chart of his earnings. Last week over a span of 4 days or so, he sent me 8 versions of the chart. (It was an impressive chart). At one point, he asked, “Am I annoying you or motivating you?” It was such an insightful question as he was almost on the line of annoying. I’m pretty optimistic about our chances to retire early. I hope you take this week’s posts as motivating, not annoying.
- “But I can’t do what you are doing” – It’s usually the first thing I hear with these kinds of posts. It’s true, where you are in your life is not going to be where we are. You may be ahead of us, you may be behind us. You will have different opportunities. Some of them will be better than ours. Some may not be as good. Everyone is going to be different. Instead of focusing on the very specifics of our plan, look at the generalities behind it. If you see that we are saving on taxes, ask yourself what might be within your ability to do the same.
Lastly, part of this series is inspired by this 9 month old Money Magazine article. We had talked about this plan way before the article came out, but the family and the plan may be similar to ours. Inspiration for getting this finally out this week was brought by fellow Money Writer, Madison DuPaix, who was interviewed by Yahoo Finance last week.
Start at The Introduction – Part 0. Alternatively, you can jump to Our Early Retirement Plan: Where We Are Now (Part 1), Our Early Retirement Plan: My Personal Income (Part 2), Our Early Retirement Plan: My Wife’s Plan (Part 3), Our Early Retirement Plan: Obstacles and Expenses (Part 4), or Our Early Retirement Plan: Motivation, Numbers & Tools, and Conclusion (Part 5).
My plan is to semi-retire in 9 years when I turn 50. I don’t have a detailed plan yet because I’m in school now. I look forward to seeing yours.
Why was he sending you the chart? I would find that annoying unless there was information in there that would be helpful. Just seeing someone’s earnings doesnt’ haelp anyone…
He was trying to show me a way that he’s found to make money that he wants to share with me. Unfortunately, I’ve been “too busy” to dig into it.
“Luck is the residue of design” is a John Milton quote. Rickey smartly “borrowed” it (and it is often attributed to him) simply because it’s a great quote :)
He must have done a great job of marketing it as well. I did a good amount of research and almost all of them were attributed to Rickey.
Yes, Rickey definitely had a better marketing department than Milton :) He was also a “bit” more popular with the 20th century media than Milton.
It’s from Milton’s 1628 work “At a vacation exercise in the college”. From the prose section of this work, I believe. I’d have to crack open my Milton book to be sure :)
Regardless of the origin, it’s a great quote.
You are right about the ‘shot in the dark’. I used to do quite a bit of very detailed retirement planning but the more I did, the more I realized I was wasting my time.
I think having a fairly general plan and sticking to it is the way to go.
Mike
I enjoy learning how others approach finances and planning, of course no two situations are exactly alike. There’s a reason it’s called personal finance. I’m late to the gate if I want to retire early, so I really need to see how others are going about it.