All Forum Posts by: John C.

 Hi Jack. 
I don’t blame you for wanting to stick around another few years bc of your huge salary lol. But it’s nice to know you have a plan and a definite time line for calling it quits, isn’t it?  

Yeah a lot of us also just don’t know when to quit, when enough is enough. The golden handcuffs.  At least you have a cut off point in 3 years lol.  Good for you.  

congrats and good luck!! 

@Carlos Ptriawan

Oops, I see what you mean now.  Yeah we still have a primary, which is now the coop apt that we own.  And yes we plan to never sell that one, unless my wife wants a different apt.  So, no, probably never renting.  

@Carlos Ptriawan

Yes I agree with your rental numbers.  Sometimes it’s way cheaper to rent and invest the savings, which would usually grow much faster and be completely passive.  There’s no shame to renting, as long you’re investing the savings.  It’s all about getting to that number as soon as we can, right?  Renting cheaply is just another way toward that goal:)

@K S

My situation was a bit more complicated.  I had access to both a 401 and a 457, amongst a couple other retirement accounts.  No matching.  1 account I did for 22 years and the other for about 12.  Those 2 ended up at around $1.4M when I retired 5 years ago.  The smaller accounts brought me up to about $2M.  My wife did her 401 for 19 years and ended up at almost $1M.  She had matching.  So between the 2 of us we had $3M in our retirement accounts.  now around $4M.  So yeah, if we need to it would easily cover our living expenses even though we’re 11 years shy of 59.5.  

@Carlos Ptriawan: 

Not renting.  You own coop apts :)

You pay maintenance each month like a condo owner pays the common charges. But the maintenance is all inclusive.  Has, heat, water, taxes etc.  the only other bill we pay is for internet.  2 bills per month :)

Thanks !
we actually did sell our primary home, a SFH, and moved into a coop apt lol. Totally maintenance free. No more shoveling snow, raking leaves, etc. And the apt cost 1/2 of the house. So we were able to bank that as well. So now we just lock the apt door and go off wherever we want without worrying about security, maintenance, etc. Total freedom :)

A few mil.  Took home a couple mil.  plus I have a pension that pays for all our basic living expenses.  So, whatever dividends we get we spend on luxuries and vacations.  And we each have our own 401Ks that we maxed out each year for about 20 years.

But theoretically, $2M in stocks alone should produce more than enough between growth and divs to pay our living expenses if I didn’t have a pension.  

We sold it all in 2019 and retired in our early 40s. Thought about 1031 but after a year couldn’t find anything that would cash flow as well as our units. Didn’t want to the hassle of maintenance or management. So we sold it all piece by piece, paid the taxes, and never looked back.  Also it completely freed us to be able to travel anytime anywhere for weeks at a time and ultimately months at a time.  

I know we had less on paper right after selling. But the stock market has been good and I think we made up most if not all of the $ lost to taxes in the last few years.   And probably from here on our networth will grow even faster than had we left it in RE.  The stock market does tend to grow much faster.  And no hassles.  

We bought some amount of dividend paying stocks and indexes that help to offset our previous cashflow.  

I initially thought I would keep the properties as a part time job forever.  But, once we had enough networth and dividends there was no more need to keep working.  

To each their own. We decided that enough was enough and left the field completely.  Never been happier or less stressed.  

awesome!

Congrats!