Posted on 08/19/2019 9:03:32 AM PDT by freedumb2003
Can I retire on $500K?
Soon to be ex-wife and I had the last of all our blow-outs. 25 years married, no kids, own the house outright, $1.7 MM (maybe 2), zero debt, 60-something.
Reached out to Cordell Cordell the only law firm I know of that will take care of the man side of things.
soon to be ex-wife does not work.
How long will you live?
Okay - how about what kind of lifespans have your near kin experienced?
Social Security - she can draw under your account due to over 10 years of marriage. You will draw under your own account.
Neither of you can determine at which age the other decides to start drawing SS. It is an individual decision.
You will be okay - depending on medical expenses, and life expectancy.
Best wishes in your new life.
This is a depressing thread...
There’s a reason why certain 3rd world retirement destinations are cheap..
They’re straddling the equator. Air conditioning isn’t really a thing in those places.
Eight months of the year, you’ll sit around listening to the flesh on your bones literally cook in the heat. Exercise consists of attempting to conserve energy while swatting at ginormous, ravenous insects.
The water is infested with toxic microbes that can kill you if you drink it, bathe in it, or brush your teeth with it.
Bilbao is very nice and orderly, but weather like Seattle though.
Spain is ... well, peaceful and safe, in truth, the crazy is just the cultural difference. Some things make sense there, to them, that don’t make sense here.
$500,000 a year amortized at 4% per year for thirty years generates ~$27,800 per year, and at the end of the thirty year period, you will have nothing left (which may be fine since you do not have children). If you live longer than thirty years, you will have to get by on your pension and SSI. Your amortized investments, pension and SSI, will produce $71,000 per year, for thirty years, before taxes and spousal support, if any. Depending on your lifestyle, that should cover you in a lot of places, including Southern Arizona, South Texas, large portions of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, as well as upstate New York and Pennsylvania, among other places. If you also work for a few more years, then you should be able to retire in these places very comfortably.
You are correct. Also, another factor is that there are many people who know (or could easily learn how) but couldn't be bothered. They would rather pay somebody else to do it.
Since moving into my condo community, there are a lot of retired people who do "handyman" stuff for other owners. I've already had them over a few times to do some odd and ends, such as put shelving up in a closet, install a ceiling fan - all stuff I can do myself but put me in the category of "couldn't be bothered" because I still work full time and so my leisure time is at a premium. When I retire however, I'm "all in" for doing odds and ends for others, including walking their dogs and detailing their cars.
It's a real cottage industry, this handyman kind of stuff. The guy who put up my shelves is nearly 80 years old and he tells me he makes about $500 a week doing these kinds of jobs and they are all in this condo community. Tax free. He doesn't even really need the money either, he does it because he has the free time and likes to stay active. That's me...someday in the future.
Many of the “financial planners” I have met who work at big banks, etc. and get paid VERY high salaries are absolutely horrible at INVESTING. And I speak as one who sees their investments, spending decisions, cash balances, etc.
It is sort of this phenomenon (that is also prevalent regarding MBA degrees, please forgive me if you have one) where people are just presumed to be genius-money-wizards.
Being a financial planner is just a job - but the number one rule seems to be “get a large chunk of money under management”. The going rip-off rate for managing someone else’s money seems to be (at least) 1% of assets under management. But there are all kinds of hidden add-ons for selling annuities, insurance, load mutual funds, mortgages, master limited partnership investments, oil drilling funds, etc.
If you have $500,000 under management, and are getting charged 1% that is more than $400 per month. $5,000 per year. But some people seem to feel better doing that.
Oh, and I am not a bitcoin-believer or a gold-bug. So don’t read that sort of stuff into this.
Hmmm.
I grew up in the Philippines.
Air conditioning is near-universal.
And you CAN survive the heat.
In truth its about as hot, usually, as a US South Eastern summer. Atlanta in July is very close.
But over there its always summer.
If you were making between 100k - 250k working part time, you'd keep working too.
I would love to do this. My wife...not so much. All she sees are maintenance troubles on the road and the horrors of “camping”. She is not to be “inconvenienced”. LOL.
Like I said in a reply earlier, I'm getting up to the retirement age and so my focus is "Keep the wife happy, keep the wife happy..." Because I'd have to pony up even more than FD2003 if my marriage went south!
But I can't complain. It's been a nice marriage so far. Something like 35 years. We keep it positive and we ensure our home is an oasis from the craziness outside it.
If only the U.S. had the same standard!
My bad; I didn’t do the math.
I have to admit that I have not seen this movie. But I take $50 in Reno (cheaper than Vegas) and it lasted 10 minutes. So No, I am not a gambler.
Saw loads of country and visited our son in college once a year. It was a very pleasant way to make money stretch.
I second this advise. My first marriage lasted only 6 years and for the year after my divorce, my students (I was teaching High School math then) all suffered a one grade deficit until I got back to being myself. I looked back over the grades I gave and realized that I was not teaching very well, and must have been really tough on the kids. But you do get over it and then life seems OK again.
“What idiot asks legal advice and financial planning on the internet?”
Maybe a person seeking the insight and wisdom of others who’ve navigated similar waters in addition to CFPs and fiduciary investment advisers? Who would consider just one point of view? It’s call wisdom. Most professionals have boilerplate plans which don’t cover foreign countries, RV-ing other options.
We met many couples like you who were doing a week end camping trip but would not consider a longer trip. We were full time with no home base. But the main thing is that you have to be comfortable with that one other person. When I suggested it, my wife did her “happy” dance. It turns out we both loved being on the road but after a time we got too old to want to do all the basic camping things. So I understand completely. That’s when we moved into a condo community and sold the RV. Yes, sometimes I miss it, but it really was getting to be too much of a chore to hook up and go. We discovered this after living for 4 years in our condo and realizing that we only took the RV out one time.
Well good luck with that!
Can a man draw under his wife's Social Security account if he was married to her for over 10 years (and she worked). Just curious.
I'm still a few years from Social Security eligibility so I'm still new to this.
Can you say cash?
I will probably do the same thing. I will be that little old man working for all of the old widows. You never know what else might come up.
I knew a guy who was retired from the plumbers union in Mass. He would do jobs in NH for cash. He was as busy as he wanted to be. Plus he was still collecting his pension.
There is a guy in my office who is completely inept at anything mechanical. When he bought his first house in Hollis, NH he called one of the other guys to ask:
“Who do you call to fill up your well?”
We still tease him about that today, ten years later. The next day he called Bill to tell him that he could not get Bill’s cordless drill(that he borrowed)to drill a hole in the wall.
Bill said: “you have it in reverse”
The same guy bought a used commercial mower. He used it several times and then could not get it started. He had the local small engine company come pick it up to fix it.
Wait for it.
It was out of gasoline. It had sat in his front yard for weeks.
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