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).