High NW People - tell me about your retirement

[Anonymous]

I’m 55 and have a NW of about $10 M and am thinking about retiring soon. But I don’t know what that really looks like. SAH spouse, kids finishing up in college. Most friends have no plans.

I’m in a FT job making $275,000. It’s hard to take much time off, but I could get a little more flexibility on vacation, so might not quit work right away and see how it goes to taper off. So maybe stop in 1-3 years. Income from investments would be about $250,000 -$300,000 before any SS. We’d have to buy healthcare and would do some travel but not that luxurious.

We like our suburban DC house, don’t really want to move away now. We’d like a vacation home if I could get more time off. Probably something with a view, vacation homes seem to be in the $1.5-$2.5 range. Torn between a few locations that we like, various distances from here.

If I stopped working altogether we could move in a few years, but not sure where. Maybe closer to a kid if they’ve settled somewhere.

Please share how you’re doing it.

[Anonymous]

How did you accumulate that much on an income of $275K?

[Anonymous]

I’d love to know what type of job would keep you working with so little flexibility. Seriously, life’s too short, my friend. Sadly at 55, life can hit hard and fast. You’re blessed to have financial freedom. Go enjoy it.

My parents retired early 50s, bought a house in Chatham, MA with enough room for kid and grandkids to visit. My mom does volunteer work, my dad picked up part time work that had nothing to do with his profession. They travel and rent a house in Florida for the winter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How did you accumulate that much on an income of $275K?

Likely inheritance/s.

[Anonymous]

I think a vacation home is just a bad idea. It's going to cost so much to just maintain, and you'll probably get bored of it soon (you're already torn on where it'd be). You can still have extended stays in other ways that will be much less financially cumbersome.

[Anonymous]

Two things we did in preparation for retirement:
1) Dream a bit. How & where would you want to spend your time if money were no object?
2) Map our scenarios. Create a spreadsheet to map out costs to live under each scenario, so you can evaluate the opportunity costs better. You can't know everything, but it will give you a good guesstimate.

DH & I both retired at 44. Moved overseas to a place neither of us had any prior connection to with. We wanted an adventure and we hoped to broaden our then-10yo's world view. COL was much lower in our new place, which made it easy to continue saving aggressively while living with very little constraint.

We're now 55 with a NW of just under 10m, dual nationals, learned a new language and have formed deep connections with our new community. We return to DC ~3x/y to care for parents and visit friends. DD is at uni in a country nearby, and education costs are a tiny fraction of what we'd initially saved for in her 529. She'll have plenty if she wants to do a masters in the US, but doesn't seem interested in that yet.

I organize a lot of community events, centered around the sports I love (tennis/padel) & volunteer with LGBT groups in our city in honor of our daughter. The rest of my time is spent doing ceramics and meeting up with friends. DH writes articles, goes to the gym and hangs out with friends. We go on dates. We explore quieter places in our adoptive country, as well as visits to new places every now and then.

It didn't come overnight, but each step was an adventure that we, as a family, were all on board for. Life is currently low stress and quite honestly, (touching wood) ... happy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Two things we did in preparation for retirement:
1) Dream a bit. How & where would you want to spend your time if money were no object?
2) Map our scenarios. Create a spreadsheet to map out costs to live under each scenario, so you can evaluate the opportunity costs better. You can't know everything, but it will give you a good guesstimate.

DH & I both retired at 44. Moved overseas to a place neither of us had any prior connection to with. We wanted an adventure and we hoped to broaden our then-10yo's world view. COL was much lower in our new place, which made it easy to continue saving aggressively while living with very little constraint.

We're now 55 with a NW of just under 10m, dual nationals, learned a new language and have formed deep connections with our new community. We return to DC ~3x/y to care for parents and visit friends. DD is at uni in a country nearby, and education costs are a tiny fraction of what we'd initially saved for in her 529. She'll have plenty if she wants to do a masters in the US, but doesn't seem interested in that yet.

I organize a lot of community events, centered around the sports I love (tennis/padel) & volunteer with LGBT groups in our city in honor of our daughter. The rest of my time is spent doing ceramics and meeting up with friends. DH writes articles, goes to the gym and hangs out with friends. We go on dates. We explore quieter places in our adoptive country, as well as visits to new places every now and then.

It didn't come overnight, but each step was an adventure that we, as a family, were all on board for. Life is currently low stress and quite honestly, (touching wood) ... happy.

You are an inspiration, PP! Thank you for sharing and all the best to you and your family.

[Anonymous]

We are originally from a European country we may retire to, but our youngest is still in high school here in the DC area, and she, along with our oldest, are planning to attend university in the US, at least for undergrad - grad school might be in Europe. So right now we're staying here, still living in our starter home, driving our old Japanese cars

NW is same as yours, but two of our kids have medical diagnoses and we are being cautious with spending. Sharing the wealth between high need and low need kids is an ongoing question, because we don't know what the future will bring, how their diseases will progress, or even whether our others kids will be diagnosed as well.

[Anonymous]

I need more details about how you’re calculating networth. For example, our home would sell for $2.2-2.3 and we owe less than $500k. So, for the sake of argument we have $1.8 in it.

3.5 million in retirement accounts + $30k in art/jewlery.

What else should we be including in networth? Cars? We have no debt, colleges are paid for. Is our networth approx $5 million? How do you have double that making $275k???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I need more details about how you’re calculating networth. For example, our home would sell for $2.2-2.3 and we owe less than $500k. So, for the sake of argument we have $1.8 in it.

3.5 million in retirement accounts + $30k in art/jewlery.

What else should we be including in networth? Cars? We have no debt, colleges are paid for. Is our networth approx $5 million? How do you have double that making $275k???

Anyone who needs to ask themselves how to calculate net worth, and is nickel and diming their material goods, does NOT have a high net worth. The point of calculating net worth is to assess how much you could liquidate for if need be. There are various ways to calculate NW, with or without one's primary residence and with and without one's valuables, but the fact of the matter is, you need a roof over your head, and your collectibles probably won't sell for that much, given commission and fees you will probably need to pay to unload them. My family has a lot of antiques and collectibles - it hardly ever sells for what you think it will. You could say you have around 4M in net worth.

I am not OP, but I have 10M+, solely because I made interesting choices decades ago in the stock market. I invested very little, but since most of it was in high tech, it worked out great. No inheritance, no high income. It happens.

[Anonymous]

I’m 48 and would love to retire. The only thing holding me back is the cost of healthcare. My mom is 75, and has certain healthcare problems that would cost a fortune if she didn’t have the amazing healthcare plan she received as part of her retirement. I just don’t know how to get around this.

[Anonymous]

OP here, thanks for the ideas. Taking it slow and planning some solid vacations seems to be the right choice for the next year as we decide. Job will work with me to allow more flexibility but I’d need to tell them what I want in advance.

The NW is pretty liquid, I didn’t think we needed exact #s at this level for this discussion. Anyone in the $6-15 M range is probably having roughly similar ideas. Given the market and my job, I’m not too anxious to buy a 2nd home right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I need more details about how you’re calculating networth. For example, our home would sell for $2.2-2.3 and we owe less than $500k. So, for the sake of argument we have $1.8 in it.

3.5 million in retirement accounts + $30k in art/jewlery.

What else should we be including in networth? Cars? We have no debt, colleges are paid for. Is our networth approx $5 million? How do you have double that making $275k???

Anyone who needs to ask themselves how to calculate net worth, and is nickel and diming their material goods, does NOT have a high net worth. The point of calculating net worth is to assess how much you could liquidate for if need be. There are various ways to calculate NW, with or without one's primary residence and with and without one's valuables, but the fact of the matter is, you need a roof over your head, and your collectibles probably won't sell for that much, given commission and fees you will probably need to pay to unload them. My family has a lot of antiques and collectibles - it hardly ever sells for what you think it will. You could say you have around 4M in net worth.

I am not OP, but I have 10M+, solely because I made interesting choices decades ago in the stock market. I invested very little, but since most of it was in high tech, it worked out great. No inheritance, no high income. It happens.

Well, your response answered my question. I, personally, don’t include our home or cars in our networth. Also, given that most Americans have less than $400k in retirement assets you may want to rethink how you define “high networth”, fwiw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I need more details about how you’re calculating networth. For example, our home would sell for $2.2-2.3 and we owe less than $500k. So, for the sake of argument we have $1.8 in it.

3.5 million in retirement accounts + $30k in art/jewlery.

What else should we be including in networth? Cars? We have no debt, colleges are paid for. Is our networth approx $5 million? How do you have double that making $275k???

Anyone who needs to ask themselves how to calculate net worth, and is nickel and diming their material goods, does NOT have a high net worth. The point of calculating net worth is to assess how much you could liquidate for if need be. There are various ways to calculate NW, with or without one's primary residence and with and without one's valuables, but the fact of the matter is, you need a roof over your head, and your collectibles probably won't sell for that much, given commission and fees you will probably need to pay to unload them. My family has a lot of antiques and collectibles - it hardly ever sells for what you think it will. You could say you have around 4M in net worth.

I am not OP, but I have 10M+, solely because I made interesting choices decades ago in the stock market. I invested very little, but since most of it was in high tech, it worked out great. No inheritance, no high income. It happens.

Well, your response answered my question. I, personally, don’t include our home or cars in our networth. Also, given that most Americans have less than $400k in retirement assets you may want to rethink how you define “high networth”, fwiw.

No need to feel miffed. Banks and wealth managers don't care what the average American thinks. They used to define high net worth as above 1M in liquid or near-liquid assets (so excluding goods and real estate, mostly just cash, stocks, bonds, and bullion - retirement accounts would be liquid after retirement age). Lately this threshold has been moving towards 5M. Ultra high net worth individuals are those with around 30M of liquid or near-liquid assets. There are obviously wealthy people with real estate fortunes, or people who own a $15M Stradivarius, or whatever, but these types of assets need a little time to sell, so they are typically not considered liquid. This should give you a starting framework to think about net worth and wealth.

[Anonymous]

I retired from full time at 61 but my company asked me to work part time (25%) in an advisor role. I could do a lot of that work remotely but it kept me in the game mentally rather than a cold Turkey retirement. I was also able to join two company Boards and that too kept me active but still with plenty of free time to enjoy retirement. All of the compensation I was receiving covered a lot of our overhead so I wasn’t having to dig too deep into my savings. I’m now winding all of that down as I’d rather spend time with my grandchildren, travel, play golf, do non profit work etc. So, retire when you can afford to but have a plan for how to stay active, mentally engaged and give you time to enjoy life.