I rather enjoy reading from people older than me about saving for retirement simply by being frugal and putting money aside into a savings account. A great example to live by, but it needs to be tweaked for the modern world of low interest savings accounts and save the money in an investment account. If you want to keep it simple, then put it in a S&P 500 index fund. Or with a hair more complexity use Paul Merriman's "two funds for life" model of half in a small-cap value fund and half in a S&P 500 index fund. I usually encourage 30+ equity mutual funds and each month investing into whichever one has the lowest balance that month (buy low). It takes a few Saturdays of research to wrap your mind around those types of investing styles. But once you do, it's easy breezy to implement like it's a regular "expense" in your budget.
Nice thing about a passbook savings account is that it is about as liquid as you can get.
I retired four years ago and my wife and I are living off social security. But before I retired we became completely debt free. We own our home, four cars, and a fully stocked shop building. We also have 25 acres of forest that is harvestable every ten years or so, for many thousands of dollars.
Our monthly cost of living is half our SS checks. But the big key to this whole thing is that we simply need very little money to live. Part of it is the ridiculously low property taxes: 32 acres and a home, for the price of a large pizza every month.
And the other part is that we just don’t want much of anything. My one extravagance is that I pay for Youtube premium because I use it constantly, and it is also how I learn songs for my bands, which are really a hobby experience. It only earns me a few hundred a month.
But I feel richer than I have at any time in my life and I also enjoy more dayly joy than I have at any time in my life. I’m 71, and had an 11+ hour heart surgery two years ago that knocked 15-20 years off my age.
I know it won’t last forever, but I certainly never anticipated this retirement when I was a young man.
Nice thing about a passbook savings account is that it is about as liquid as you can get.
I retired four years ago and my wife and I are living off social security. But before I retired we became completely debt free. We own our home, four cars, and a fully stocked shop building. We also have 25 acres of forest that is harvestable every ten years or so, for many thousands of dollars.
BTW, I dreaded tax season every year back in the day. Now it takes me about a half hour to do my taxes. I pay no income tax any more. If push came to shove, I could even work a part time job and make almost $30k and still pay no income tax. But so far there is no need.
Our monthly cost of living is half our SS checks. But the big key to this whole thing is that we simply need very little money to live. Part of it is the ridiculously low property taxes: 32 acres and a home, for the price of a large pizza every month.
And the other part is that we just don’t want much of anything. My one extravagance is that I pay for Youtube premium because I use it constantly, and it is also how I learn songs for my bands, which are really a hobby experience. It only earns me a few hundred a month.
But I feel richer than I have at any time in my life and I also enjoy more dayly joy than I have at any time in my life. I’m 71, and had an 11+ hour heart surgery two years ago that knocked 15-20 years off my age.
I know it won’t last forever, but I certainly never anticipated this retirement when I was a young man.