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To: PIF
My post was with the understanding that one owned his own home already before retiring. In my case, with my 3.3% fixed interest rate on my mortgage, I'm not paying extra on the mortgage -- I put that extra into our Roth investments. But I won't count us as wealthy enough to retire on unless:

1) 4% annual withdrawals from our investments are enough to live on. In our case, that's tax free because it's in our Roth IRAs.

2) If there's debt (i.e. mortgage) then the wealth has to be enough to not just make the payments (on top of the 4% withdrawals above), but also pay off the debt immediately if needed. This is to handle Proverbs 22:7's teaching that the borrower is slave to the lender. If, for whatever reason, there's a dispute between me and the bank over what I can or can't do with my property, I want to be able to pay it off immediately. That means our wealth has to be enough to pay off the mortgage but still have enough wealth left over for the step 1 4% withdrawals for us to live on.

I'm quasi-retired. Whenever our wealth reaches about 1.5 million (4% per year withdrawal = $60K, mostly tax free in our case) + whatever the mortgage balance is, that's more than enough to live on in low cost of living Alabama. Especially in my case with my power bills averaging $70/month. (What I've posted about before on the energy efficiency self-reliance project of going solar, liking it, converting my 2 nat gas appliances to electric, and converting one of our two cars into an EV so that most of our transportation energy is also self-reliant.)

The low cost-of-living Alabama, plus the energy self-reliance project are an example of it being not just how much you have invested, but also if you make sure you don't need as much wealth for retirement.

72 posted on 02/23/2026 6:11:18 AM PST by Tell It Right (1 Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: Tell It Right

My post was about how much a million will buy in retirement is the rest of the country. Not just the few who live in AL.


73 posted on 02/23/2026 6:18:03 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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