Tastes Like Retirement
As we get older, weekends and paid time off (PTO) at work become more and more appealing. We love Fridays (and the weekends) and dread returning to work on Monday. The lucky few (and they are lucky) don’t feel the sting of being a corporate drone or the muscular and/or skeletal pain that decades of physical work takes on the body, mind, and soul.
Regardless of how great you have it at work or how much they pay you or how much PTO you get each year, it’s still work and many of us have been doing it for a long time now. And it get’s tiresome. I’ve done thousands of weekly reports for the bosses, been in thousands of meetings, and had to deal with crazy bosses or corporate policies.
If you are like me, each weekend and vacation certainly give us something that Tastes Like Retirement, at least a little bit. I can taste it so badly that I was determined to hyper-focus on it and that brings us to the creation of this blog.
Tastes Like Retirement is a site that will appeal to those that want to get laser-focused on retirement in fairly short order. This site was started about 6-years prior to my expected retirement (@ age 62). At that point in time, we should have a investment portfolio that works together with our pension, social security, and no debt.
That amount of assets or income won’t make us super wealthy or allow us to lose our focus on expense management but it should allow us to get out of the drudge of work and have some travel fun.
I hope you follow along on our journey as we action our plan and retire by 62 years old.
- Did you get a late start to focusing on retirement? We started late too and I’ll share what we have and are doing to catch-up.
- Have you made several investment mistakes over the years? We’ve gambled on speculative stocks way too much but are now focused on quality, long-term investments.
- Are you trying to figure out how to grow your assets and then turn them into retirement income? You can learn how pensions, dividends, stocks, bonds, and real estate are all part of our plan.
- Do you have a pension and want to know how to utilize it in your retirement planning? I’ve got a pension and you’ll learn how we plan to use it as the core of our income plan.
- Are you concerned about long-term care? You can follow our journey as we decide to either purchase a LTC policy or self-insure.
- Are you considering doing Roth conversions? You see exactly how we are handling that issue and moving a good portion of our funds to the tax-free Roth.
Mr. TLR
I started this blog at 56 years old with a goal of retiring at 62.
We’ve made a lot of investment mistakes, taken a lot of gambles, and lost a lot of money in the process. But we’ll have put two girls through college (debt free for them and us) and prepared them for life outside the home as strong, independent women. Honestly, that was our focus and much of our income went toward the kids.
I’ve got a finance degree from a state university and had been in the banking and brokerage business prior to working at my current company. My current company has a pension, retiree healthcare, and a 401(k) – count me as one of the lucky (only 6% of companies offer all three of those items).
Mrs. TLR is now 61 years-old (I’m 59 1/2), she’s been a stay at home mom for our two kids, and she’s blessed me with 30 years of marriage. We’ve made a lot of sacrifices living off one income, focusing on the kids, and have only recently started to see my work compensation really make a difference.
I’ve been at my current company for nearly 24 years and currently make about $350,000 annually. The financial planning path hasn’t been all puppies and rainbows though. At 48 years of age in January 2012, we had a net worth of only $155,000. At that time, I was 1 1/2 years away from having two kids in college and we had debt with few assets …. we were in trouble. Over 10 years later, both kids have graduated from college, we’ve grown that net worth to over $1.3M, we have no debt (down from over $250k), and we have an $885,000 investment portfolio. When I started this blog 3 1/2 years ago (3/31/19) out net worth was $713,933.
By the time we retire in 2 1/2 years, I hope to have a net worth of $1.7M (including home), an investment portfolio of $1.3M, and still no debt.
One thing about us. Once we decide to do something we’ll get it done and that’s why I’m confident that I’ll be able to retire in in 2025. Given our late start, it’s that kind of focus that we’ll need to get us to the retirement promised land.
Thanks for following our journey and I hope you can learn something from our mistakes and successes.
Mr. TLR