I said we can’t retire yet. Am I wrong?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:i think you should continue to work. your problem isn't whether you saved enough, 50 y.o. is too young to retire (and more years to support in retirement)

I just retired at 50 with $3M in the bank. Financial assure me I never have to work again. I do have health care though so that helps.

We just ran our numbers with $12m in the bank and two paid off houses. One kid launched with good job, the other a junior in college. Decided we have about 3-4 more years of working before we retire. Everyone has a different threshold and wants.

Well yes, you have to determine your "baseline monthly expenses" and then your "this is how we ideally want to live monthly expenses". I'm not retiring early in my 50s, unless I can have the "ideally want to live" level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does everyone keep insisting that the mortgage needs to be paid off before retiring? I’ve been early retired for 10 years, I’m still not 65, and we still have a mortgage. I could pay it off tomorrow, but it makes no sense to do that financially. It all depends on the interest rate, the tax deductions, and how diverse your overall portfolio is. You are all retirement planning amateurs for focusing so much on mortgages.

I guess I honestly don't care if I lose a little money doing that. I prefer to be on the hook for just real estate taxes and insurance when I retire. I don't want to worry about a mortgage or pull out of savings/investments to pay it every month.

This! A paid off home means your monthly expenses can be much lower. It's a guaranteed rate of return. I personally would never retire without having a home paid off (or downsizing to one that I can pay cash for). You want to enter retirement with minimal expenses so you can spend on "desires".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Previous poster again. Just saw the post where OP said she is 12 years until the end of college. So she has a 4th grader?

Yeah, don't retire. Your most expensive kid-related years are all in front of you.

Also, never assume your kid will attend XYZ college. We thought this and then lo and behold we have a kid attending an Ivy (never would have predicted this as we did not ourselves and we didn't push for it). A few months ago we received the formal first year cost estimate from the university and it's $97k. And we don't qualify for any aid on our HHI of $350k.

This. Your unknowns are too high right now. We are roughly your age but we have a kid in college and a kid who is a senior. When we say we have college funded, we mean funded for who we know our kids are and what we would like to give them to set them up. We didn’t know that for each kid until midway through high school. Also, your spending is pretty high.

My DH wants to retire soon. We have assets like yours. But he has said he won’t do it until 4 years from now when our youngest is a college senior. Kids change the game.

I've aggressively funded our kids' 529 plans since birth (some years over DH's objections) because I don't want to be in a situation where he retires first (he's a little older) and I have to keep working to fund college. I prioritized saving as much as possible while we're both at our peak earning years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why does everyone keep insisting that the mortgage needs to be paid off before retiring? I’ve been early retired for 10 years, I’m still not 65, and we still have a mortgage. I could pay it off tomorrow, but it makes no sense to do that financially. It all depends on the interest rate, the tax deductions, and how diverse your overall portfolio is. You are all retirement planning amateurs for focusing so much on mortgages.

+1

It's kind of like people saying for decades that a Roth IRA is better than a traditional. I actually believed this for years until I looked into it more closely when it came time to consider doing Roth conversions. The answer is that it just depends.

People have been told the same thing for decades about not having a mortgage payment in retirement. If you are 100% stocks and have a 4% mortgage, it's a no brainer to keep the mortgage unless you just like the idea or peace of mind of not having a mortgage.