It’s year-end bonus time! And ordinarily we’d be following the plan: allocating part of our bonuses to paying down the mortgage and part to our investments. But this year, with retirement on the horizon, and our savings ahead of schedule for the year, we have some tougher decisions to make.
Though a lot is still unknown about what policies we’ll see under a Trump presidency, this much is clear: a lot is going to change. From health care, to taxes to economics, here’s what we know so far about the election’s impact on early retirees.
Something that’s on our minds lately — especially when I’m traveling for work — is all of the perks that we’re going to lose when we quit our jobs in 2017. For us, an upgraded level of travel is chief among those, but the perks we enjoy from work are different for each of us. What perks do you get now that you’ll miss when you retire?
Today, a post about the under-recognized benefits of spending less in early retirement, because spending less means earning less, and earning less means a whole bunch of benefits. (Psst: the biggest one is insulation from Obamacare price hikes.) Let’s take a deep dive into the many benefits that come with earning a low income in your early retirement years.
We get the question a lot: “How do you stay patient en route to early retirement?” But we’ve realized that’s the wrong question we should all be asking. The biggest predictor of happiness in the journey to early retirement isn’t how patient or impatient we are, it’s whether we stay engaged or let ourselves disengage at work. That’s why we now say: Don’t check out early.
The good financial news keeps rolling in over here at the Our Next Life house. We hinted at it recently, but today we’re sharing loads more detail about our ahead-of-schedule progress toward early retirement, with charts galore. It’s starting to feel downright magical around here!
We’re realizing that we’re starting to do things for the last time — especially things related to work and work travel — which is bringing out unexpected urges in us. Can you relate?
As we get closer and closer to our retirement date, the idea that we are actually going to retire early is becoming real. And as we get closer, we’re creating a different kind of to do list — one less focused on saving, and more focused on mapping out everything we need to do before we pull the plug on our careers next year.
I am definitely a planner by nature, which means that we have all kinds of contingency plans, emergency preparedness plans, you name it. But I recently realized that I tend to plan for the worst only, and not for the almost worst. Today we’re talking about what happens if any of those not-quite-worst-case scenarios happen.
We’re issuing a challenge, you guys! Instead of focusing on what we’re all doing to get to early retirement that’s the same (4% rule, high savings rate, etc.), let’s celebrate what each of us is doing that’s unique!
As we get closer and closer to early retirement, we get more excited. But it’s not all puppies and ice cream sundaes, either. There are some definite ups and downs that have come along with our journey, and sometimes we each handle them differently. Here’s how we navigate that as a couple.
early retirement is a bfd. and it’s not for everyone. it’s a very different path from the one most people follow for a reason, and it’s not one we should go down without having our eyes wide open. early retirement won’t magically fix everything we wish was different about us or our lives, and it comes with its own set of pitfalls and stresses. to help sort this out, we’ve put together a list: the ten questions you should be able to answer before you retire early.
today’s post continues the conversation about whether you should move to retire, and asks: should you downsize your home when you retire? we bought our house thinking it was our forever home, but now realize it’s more house than we need, and are pondering one last move when we quit our jobs in a few years.
