Thanks for posting!
I like the tools available here:
https://engaging-data.com/early-retirement-calculators-and-tools/
Particularly the “Rich, Broke, or Dead?” simulator and visualization.
But if you have a mind for numbers, you will often get the best results for your use case by modeling it yourself, as you mentioned.
A coworker just told me he made an offer on a $1M house. I congratulated him, but privately I thought, “But how many years does this add to your date?”
When I pay off my house, I’m never moving again unless there’s absolutely no alternative (family size, etc.).
I would post more regularly, but my financial situation changes very slowly and there’s just not that much to talk about related to it without repeating myself. I don’t follow outside FIRE resources, so I can’t share anything of interest. I don’t even know if I could categorize myself as FIRE exactly since I won’t be able to retire in my 40s. 50s is likely… which used to be the normal age for retirement.
I mainly subscribe with the hope of hearing from other people.
Most of my simulations occur in my head. As in simulating what it will be like to be job-free someday, haha.
When I bought my house, though, I did figure out how to do all the amortization tables myself so that I could compare all the different rates and points and stuff, along with figuring out early payment payoff periods. l felt way more in control having the same level of information available to me that the mortgage broker did.
Well, that’s depressing. Both because the average retirement savings rate is so low overall and because my savings total is more appropriate for someone a decade younger.
That said, I’ve been hoarding cash and stocks to pay off my house, and the goal is within sight in less than 18 months. I feel like having no house payment (and no debt otherwise) will have a much greater effect on both my ability to save as well as my sense of security.
When my only regular non-discretionary expenses are food, utilities, insurance, and property taxes, I’d be able to live off of a minimum wage job indefinitely if I needed to. Not that I will, but it’s nice to know a corporation no longer owns me.
I know what you mean. I quit my job in 2022 and took four months off, and I realized three things:
I have so much more energy than I realized, because my career just drains the life out of me.
I never need to worry about wasting away in retirement, because I have so many interests and projects and many of them are not passive. I never had enough time during those four months, to the point that I wondered how I found any time at all when I worked a job as well!
I need to become debt-free again as quickly as possible. I had achieved that shortly before I took that time off (coming from an apartment, having previously owned and sold a home some years prior), but bought another house afterward. I decided one of my top priorities would be paying off my mortgage as quickly as possible so that I would never again feel anxiety about quitting a job without having another one lined up first, and therefore could never be owned again by a corporation.
This would change my entire relationship with work. Just seeing my continuous progress toward this goal energizes me.
The amount of safety I’ll feel from knowing that I could survive on just $30,000 a year if absolutely necessary—enough to pay for my food, utilities, and property taxes—is enormous.
While I won’t be able to do it in 2024, I should be very close to paying off my house by the end of the year. Assuming the economy doesn’t crash, my goal is to pay it off entirely in the first half of 2025, at which point I’ll be completely debt free (I paid off the last of my student loans two years ago and I paid off my car earlier this year).
My non-discretionary expenses (food, electricity, etc.) will be pretty low at that point, perhaps less than a couple thousand per month. Security, for me, is being able to survive on a minimum wage job if it somehow became necessary, and owing no one anything.
I’d be farther along, but I overspent this year. It’s unusual for me, but I’m not going to worry too much about it. I’ll just do a better job of reining it in this year.
Dream jobs never last forever. I had one that was basically a dream job in retrospect, and I stayed there for five years. I probably was paid 25% below market there, but I didn’t care, because I liked everyone I worked with, I had friends there, the company culture was so easygoing, and the work was interesting but not stressful or high pressure. Things eventually changed, though.
My current job is basically the opposite, except I still like many of my peers and at least some of the work is interesting. High stress, terrible company culture, burnout. But I’m paid about 3.5x what I earned at the “dream job,” which will let me pay off my house very soon and retire in a reasonable time frame.
Assets in a mix of cash and bonds and no need to sell their house? Just a guess.
Wow, it took around 15 years to financially recover from the Great Recession for everyone younger than retirement age.
Agreed. By OP’s definition I’d be in the upper class, but I would actually consider myself upper middle class. I’m comfortable, but I’m definitely not wealthy. Wealthy means labor is optional and you’re leading a comfortable life.
Security is a component of wealth. Security for me means I don’t care if I have a job or not, and losing my job doesn’t mean I’d lose my house. I’m actively working on that, more so than FIRE itself.
In other words, zero debt and low monthly expenses is more important to me than retiring early, because then I know no company can ever again have leverage over me.