Even though we’re not in the savings phase of our early retirement journey, we often talk about what we’d do differently if we were just now starting to save at this point in time. Here’s a rundown on what we’d change about our approach, and what we’d do the same.
When we first formulated a real early retirement plan, it was based on the rigid belief that we’d never, ever work again. Or at least never *have* to work again. And while that’s still true — we haven’t expedited our plan by forcing ourselves to earn income in the future — we now expect to get a much more diversified set of income streams in early retirement. In part because life happens and we’ve made some different choices along the way. And in part because that recession hasn’t hit yet, health care is still up in the air, and it makes sense to keep hedging against sequence risk and health insurance uncertainty.
Paying off our mortgage last week has gotten us thinking a lot about debt, and how differently we all think about it — but also how we *feel* about it. Today we’re diving into those thoughts and feelings, and — because we got so many questions about it — diving into why we did pay off the mortgage on our house but why we’re not paying off the mortgage on our rental anytime soon.
Today we’re sharing the story of our rental property, but we wouldn’t recommend that others follow our lead on this one. The decisions that went into it were about a lot more than the bottom line.
