It's no secret that none of us are getting any younger, including ourselves. But despite our awareness of the passage of time, we haven't given much serious thought to retirement, until today when we suddenly realized that we can do it now.
Common wisdom is that you need to have one million dollars set aside for retirement in order to live off the interest without the principal draining away. We're not there, not by a long shot, and as we're well aware, we're never going to make it at our current salary and rate of investment. But today, we ran a quick back-of-the-envelope and realized that with what we do have in savings, the meager money we've managed to set aside and invest over the years, we could in effect pay ourselves our current take-home pay every month for the next nine years. Without making any sacrifices at all, we could live our current lifestyle without any sacrifices until we were 74 years old.
But we could do better than that. We wouldn't have to drive our long commute every day to and from work, so we'd save on gasoline as well as repairs and wear-and-tear on our car. We wouldn't dine out for lunch every day, although the free time on our hands might have us going out for meals more often, so that might be a wash. But if we managed our money wisely and lived frugally but comfortably, we wouldn't necessarily have to draw our next "paycheck" on a monthly basis, and could stretch those nine years out even further.
But what happens after nine years (or longer) when the money finally does run out? Well, about halfway through that period, we could start drawing full Social Security, which should give us about half of what we're earning now, so we would only have to draw that "paycheck" every other month, which would mean that the money would last 12 to 14 years instead of just nine.
What's more, we could still do the consulting work that we're doing now on a part-time basis, at least for the next couple years or so, picking hours and assignments at our leisure and working from the comfort of home rather than being an office drone. Every additional dollar we can still earn now would be one less that we'd have to pay from our current savings.
Finally, if we could sell any of our modest real-estate assets (one house and one condominium), that would be more cash in hand and less expenses per month.
Part-time freelance work, Social Security, and prudent management of our savings and assets - we won't be profiled on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous any time soon, but we wouldn't starve, either.
But having said that, here's the thing: we're ready for the next chapter in our life. Once we realized that we could actually do this - we can make it happen and happen very soon - we felt like a weight was suddenly lifted off of our shoulders. We've been working full time and nearly continuously since at least September 1980, and we're ready to move on. We can work for a few more years, but why? We don't enjoy it any more and it won't appreciably affect our delayed retirement income, so we might as well start to enjoy our retirement now, while we still have the energy and ambition to do so.
We can finally work on the yard and take on the huge honey-do list of projects that we have in mind. We can focus on our meditation practice and take the time to participate in some intensive retreats and sessions. We can catch up on our reading and we can hike. We can get a dog!
Yes, it seems it's now time to start on the next and probably final chapter of our life. It's time to walk away from work and career and ambition, and get back in touch with the things that really matter.
Of course, we'll still be blogging.
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