With all of this change that’s come about in the past couple of years, I figured I should revisit the “plan” since my retirement and savings got halved. I can’t say there are many complaints, considering how much we’d saved, so my half is a nice chunk of change. I guess my biggest complaint is finding out that the ex wanted to separate 10 months after we moved, and I quit my job and turned down a promotion to support her career. 10 months… 10 months… That seems like a time period where those feelings didn’t just pop up during those 10 months, but that’s more of a discussion for my therapist, which reminds me that I need to find a new one. To be fair, the ex did say, lets get a therapist and then if it doesn’t change, we should separate by the end of the year, which was 4 months away… So at least there was that concession, lol.
Since then, I’ve used my money to buy 5 acres, and a house. I was looking at building a house on that 5 acres until I heard from my ex that she could be moving to town, maybe in 10 years, maybe after she gets tenure, maybe sooner. Update, she moves to town in 3 weeks, so I’m glad I’m not in the middle of building a property 10 miles outside of town. I’m in the middle of getting a driveway built on the property and ultimately want to build an escape cabin out there. Nothing crazy, just a little log cabin or shipping container type home that I can go spend weekends in, and take the kids out to and enjoy time in the woods.
All of this to say, that things have changed significantly, so I wanted to see how well my retirement was looking. I like using cfiresim, for simulating retirement scenarios. When I researched some random retirement calculators back in 2017, Market Watch actually had a pretty decent one as well. I revisited cfiresim and this is what I came up with.
Last week I was on some random PF site and I saw a retirement calculator at the bottom of their site. Just for grins I threw in some numbers similar to our projections and OMG was I surprised at the outcome. According to this calculator I won’t be able to retire – ever… I mean, this particular calculator said that I’d need $10 million to retire based on my inputs. Really, $10 million?! Because of course I can’t live off of less than $500k per year, I mean, seriously, who does that? Well for starters, we don’t and according to the Census Bureau the median household income was only ~$54k which is only $450k short of our “recommended” retirement goal. While these inputs weren’t specific to our numbers, they’re close enough that we can ground truth them with our personal retirement spreadsheet.
For these calculators to get those kinds of numbers, the assumptions they make have to be pretty ridiculous, but it makes me think that these calculators can be misleading for the uninitiated. The biggest discrepancy I see is that they don’t ask what your expected income level will be. I only found one calculator that let you put that in, and nope, it wasn’t at Vanguard. I know, I expected them to have a better version of a retirement calculator, but with the screenshots I snagged, we can see why it falls short.
Holy Crazy Assumptions Batman!
Let’s start with the calculator that sparked this whole post. Again, I don’t want to say where I found this or what company is running it, but just google “retirement calculator” and have fun playing with the different versions that are out there. This calculator basically took my assumed income (not really my income, but that would be nice) and the current savings input number (not our actual number but close enough to where we’d like to be at retirement to know if the calculator is telling the truth) and spit out a freaking ridiculous number. How ridiculous you ask? Well, let’s look at it. My assumed income is $200k/yr and evidently I need to save enough to spend $500k/yr because in 25 yrs (assuming I retire at 65) I’ll have more than doubled my spending rate, and hopefully income to support that lifestyle. How it thinks I will spend $42k/month, yes, $42k PER MONTH is mind boggling. Remember that according to the Census Bureau the median US household income is only $53k per year. PER YEAR… And this calculator is telling me that I’ll need to save enough to spend $42k per month?! Holy shit….
Wow! Just, wow….
I’ll Never Retire…
No wonder people get dismayed when looking at retirement needs and savings levels. I’d be really discouraged if I thought this calculator was for real. I mean, to save $10.7 million I’d have to work another 110 yrs at our current savings levels. Actually to put it in real terms if I exclude compounding growth, I only need to save $376000 per year between now and when I turn 65. Oh yeah, you read that right. This calculator assumes I will magically gain a 53% increase in salary and be able to save ALL of it towards retirement. Wow, just wow… Who the F created this thing?!
Surely Vanguard Can Save Me?
So, I thought surely all calculators can’t be this bad, what about Vanguard, the crème de la crème of institutions that us FIRE folks love. Well, they don’t love early retirees that’s for sure. Evidently in their world you can’t retire before 50, yep, that’s the lowest age that their calculator goes. Boo… I can’t save more than 30% of my salary, because really, who does that? Oh yeah, us and probably most of the PF community. If you don’t save that much, don’t feel badly about it, that’s why it’s called “personal finance”. I’m just pointing out some flaws with their assumptions. I mean building a retirement calculator can’t be much different from building a house right? You start from nothing and design a blueprint, layout, and add all the bells and whistles. So why not make the age for retirement anything before 50 or savings rate anything over 30%? I’m no software engineer, but if you can cut it off at a certain point, why not set that point at a crazy range so people can estimate things outside the box of “early retiree is 50” and we can only save 30% of my income. At least they only assume I’ll spend 60% of my current income in retirement, which we don’t. Maybe closer to 25% of our income would be realistic, but not 60% otherwise, I’d have to work until I’m 65.
Close but no cigar!
Bankrate’s Calculator – A Nice Way to View Retirement Projections
This fairly simple calculator from Bankrate had a different take on it. Basically, you put in your inputs and then it shows you waht your portfolio could generate in monthly income. So, again if you know your monthly needs, you can figure out what you may need to start with to get there.
Not bad, Bankrate!
Really, MarketWatch has a nice Calculator? I’m Pleasantly Surprised
Then I found a nice calculator at Market Watch that didn’t set variables on anything. PLUS, it lets you calculate what you need for retirement income totally removed from assumptions based on what you make now. You can input your yearly retirement income needed based on your assumptions, not any random made up assumptions. Brilliant! PLUS, like the Bankrate calculator, it allows you to set inflation, tax rate, retirement tax rate, rate of return before and after retirement, I mean, it has it all. If you want a quick look at how doable your situation might be. Our spreadsheet also does this, but it gets so complicated explaining it, that um, yeah, this works great for me to play around with. You can see in this scenario we run out of “pre-60” money at 56 yrs old. Yipe! Granted, I could add more tweaks, and get really specific with our numbers and get a more realistic outcome, but the main point is that this is actually a good calculator.
Nice inputs!Good detail and control.What to do about that spending gap…Good income output, except for that darn gap…
If you want to play around with your numbers, I’d recommend using this one. Cfiresim also has a good calculating system, but it runs your data against all the historical data. So, if you hone in on a situation that you like using this Market Watch calculator, then you can plug the same data into Cfiresim and see how that plays out for you. It also lets you add in additional costs like estimating healthcare costs in the future, additional income and more.
Summary
We found that creating our own spreadsheet worked best for us. It’s grown and changed over the years, as we find different things we want to track, but it’s essentially our version of these 2 calculators. I rarely use it, but Mrs. SSC runs different scenarios on it about every other week. I just plug our data into one or both of these calculators and let it run and then discuss specifics with Mrs. SSC. I do use the spreadsheet but I often break it, so it’s good I’m only working with a copy, lol.
What about you? Do you use your own spreadsheet or a different retirement forecasting tool? How comfortable are you with the assumptions these online calculators make? Are they realistic for you or totally off base like I found? Let me know!
We’re closing on our lot out in Canyon Lake this Friday and we’ve been doing a lot of reviewing of the numbers and seeing if we can make them work to start our Lifestyle Change. It’s difficult to know what will come of all of this, and how accurate they will be, because they are all estimates based off of our current house/utility usage, current lifestyle, and some moving forward assumptions. We have tracked our spending for over 2 years now, so we have that to go off of, but again, they’re all just estimates. Since that’s the best we have to work with, it’s what we’ll move forward with in our planning scenarios. The short answer is that we’ll be right around break-even or living paycheck to paycheck. We’ll only need to draw off of investments for travel and unplanned items that pop up, assuming I make zero money.
This past month has been a whirlwind in regards to our Lifestyle Change and life in general. It’s literally only been about a month or so since Prof. SSC proposed her idea of our revised Hill Country Lifestyle Change to me. Since then we’ve taken a couple of different weekend trips looking at property. We’ve scoured Zillow and google maps street view (if street views actually exist…) and even more so, we’ve begun looking at house plans. Great googly moogly it’s been busy! Who would’ve thought retirement life planning would be so hectic?
Couldn’t be said better.
During that time though, we’ve figured out what we find important in our property and it’s not what you’d think. Even though we’re looking around lakes, we don’t necessarily find a lake view as important as we thought. We found that we would take more seclusion over a lake view. Yep, seclusion and that feeling of our own space is way more important to us than being right on the water with a killer view. That’s what led us to decide on the lot we think will be a perfect fit for us. It’s almost 3 acres, heavily treed with mature oaks, and we can put a house on it and have it surrounded by big trees. As of last weekend, we’re under contract on it with a closing date early next month. Now the real fun begins!
Over the last week or so Mrs. SSC has come up with FFLC (Fully Funded Lifestyle Change) version 3.0. I think it’s 3.0, but it’s probably more like version 12.0. This is focused more on how we see our Lifestyle Change and less on whether or not it’s truly Early Retirement. Version 1.0 was that we both quit at the same time and move out West, or to the East Coast and become full-time stay at home parents. Version 2.0 was that Mrs. SSC would continue teaching and I would quit and become a full-time stay at home parent, but we’d still be moving out of Texas, and definitely Houston. So what’s different with version 3.0?
Not moving close to views like this…
Well, with the lack of jobs anywhere in the U.S. for Mrs. SSC to apply to, and the fact that she loves her current gig where she is now; this version of our Lifestyle Change has us staying in Texas, but moving out to Hill Country. Yep, there’s still no snow, still no snowboarding, but I’d be able to be a stay at home dad, she’d be able to continue teaching and we could live in a drier more hilly part of Texas. Again, we’d be Changing our Lifestyle, not necessarily focused as much on “just not working”. What’s driving this new change and where did it come from so quickly? In short, we’re making our own future and not waiting for it to happen to us.
I was reading some past blog posts and I came across this one and it reminded me how lucky I am to have met Mrs. SSC. I’m also often reminded by Mrs. BITA, how lucky I am that she is so patient with me, especially because it took me 6 years to realize that achieving financial independence and early retirement (FIRE) before we turned 45 was really possible. Yes, 6 years… The following post elaborates on that backstory and the struggles Mrs. SSC has had to put up with before I finally “got it.” Thanks for sticking with me Mrs. SSC, even though I know it gets difficult at times.
Welcome back everybody and I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year’s holiday! I took some time off and am back and ready to go, woohoo! There have been so many bloggers posting 2016 wrap-ups and 2017 goals I’ve just been enjoying reading them while I took a break from our blog over the holidays. In this post, we’ll discuss the state of the SSC household, what we plan to do the same and what our new plan is in 2017. Next week, we’ll be back to discussing numbers with our 2016 wrap-up and financial changes for 2017. With so much stuff to cover, we just couldn’t fit it all into one post! Well, not one post that wasn’t 4000 words long, lol.
I can’t believe it’s been 2 years since we started the blog! Okay, it’s actually 2 months late, but, close enough for me. Going back thru all of our earlier posts and reading them (yeah I read almost all of them – again) I realized, “Holy Cow some things have changed a LOT since we started writing. Here’s what I found has changed in our Financially Independent Retire Early (FIRE) mindset, our myriad of plans, my comfort level with leaving the workforce at my peak earning years (who does that?!) and even how our timing has changed over the years. Before we get to the changes, I just want to say THANK-YOU to everyone that’s followed the blog, makes comments on the posts, and retweets the scant few things I put out there! You guys are an awesome community and I’m glad to be a part of it!
Until Mrs. SSC left her old job to teach, she was miserable. Her company continually reminded her she was just a number by dragging her and others through long protracted layoffs. Even though she didn’t get let go, the whole process left her with zero job satisfaction, and ultimately she lost all drive to work there. I felt very similarly working for that company my last year there, and after failing to get moved to a better position, I also left that company. We had both lost our ikigai…
What’s ikigai? Ikigai (pronounced icky guy) is a Japanese term that translates as “the reason to wake up in the morning.” In other words, it’s your driver in life, what keeps you going and motivated. Does that mean we really need a reason to get up in the morning if we’re retired?
Recently, Nick over at The Money Mine put out a challenge for people to describe how they got “FIRE’d Up” and what were the catalysts for your change in life to achieve that goal.
“What if everyone in the Personal Finance community could write about how they found their goals? Maybe newcomers would relate to one of these stories and decide to make these goals their own? What if that could help someone FIRE?”
Since this blog has been around for a while now and we may have newcomers that haven’t read some of our initial stories, here’s our version of how we got “FIRE’d Up.”
