Retirement Goals
This probably should have been the very first post. However, Mrs Y is never very good with the order of things, just like Mr Y is not very good at writing as he put it.
So back to what this post is about. Our retirement goals have been early retirement, like many of the personal finance bloggers out there. Early retirement is around the age 45 for us. It is approximately 15 years away from now. It is still a fairly long time. Many things might still change. For example, we do not yet have kids but we might in the near future. Or we might need to move into a house or area with lower property tax, meaning potentially a slightly more expensive house. We are trying to plan for all those variables, but we probably won't be able to plan for everything. Oh, well.
One of the biggest regret we have is not investing as soon as we started working. We did not start invest outside our 401k and Roth until about two years ago. That is after we cleared our bank accounts after buying the house and the car. At the time, it was the right decision to pay the house with cash and we don't like owing people money. We also needed a second car for Mr. Y to get to work as the train station was no longer walk-able. We were still able to save about 65-75% of our income and decided the low bank interest rates were not going to bring us to early retirement.
Mr. Y tried futures trading. It was a short lived period until he decided it was time consuming and too risky from time to time. We also tried investing in stocks. Even though we still own some stocks, we did make some poor choices. Groupon was a good example. Slowly, we concluded index funds, REITs, close ended funds, and P2P lending are safer with fairly high returns.
For early retirement, we want to maintain our current life style, nothing fancy. But we want to continue to travel at least twice a year. We still want to enjoy good food, mostly still home-cooked. Of course, most importantly, having fun with friends. In order to have all that, we need to have a continuous passive income stream. We are slowly marching towards the goal. Very slowly with 15 years on the countdown.
So back to what this post is about. Our retirement goals have been early retirement, like many of the personal finance bloggers out there. Early retirement is around the age 45 for us. It is approximately 15 years away from now. It is still a fairly long time. Many things might still change. For example, we do not yet have kids but we might in the near future. Or we might need to move into a house or area with lower property tax, meaning potentially a slightly more expensive house. We are trying to plan for all those variables, but we probably won't be able to plan for everything. Oh, well.
One of the biggest regret we have is not investing as soon as we started working. We did not start invest outside our 401k and Roth until about two years ago. That is after we cleared our bank accounts after buying the house and the car. At the time, it was the right decision to pay the house with cash and we don't like owing people money. We also needed a second car for Mr. Y to get to work as the train station was no longer walk-able. We were still able to save about 65-75% of our income and decided the low bank interest rates were not going to bring us to early retirement.
Mr. Y tried futures trading. It was a short lived period until he decided it was time consuming and too risky from time to time. We also tried investing in stocks. Even though we still own some stocks, we did make some poor choices. Groupon was a good example. Slowly, we concluded index funds, REITs, close ended funds, and P2P lending are safer with fairly high returns.
For early retirement, we want to maintain our current life style, nothing fancy. But we want to continue to travel at least twice a year. We still want to enjoy good food, mostly still home-cooked. Of course, most importantly, having fun with friends. In order to have all that, we need to have a continuous passive income stream. We are slowly marching towards the goal. Very slowly with 15 years on the countdown.
It's great to read the goals of other PF bloggers. Even though you started a bit late on the proper investments, your huge savings rate should help make up for that. Great work
ReplyDeleteStarting late meaning we need to be more active and more aggressive. We will see how we do in a few years.
DeleteSince you are saving such a large percentage of your income, early retirement is a definite possibility for you. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteThanks. We have been trying hard and so far so good.
ReplyDelete