Early Retirement Archives - Ms. Financial Literacy

The Perceived Obstacle to Our Early Retirement

The thought of having to pay the high cost of health insurance premium out-of-pocket (we were thinking about $1,000/month) was one of the biggest reasons my husband and I hesitated about retiring early. Early retirement conversations first came up between us around year 2012. Back then, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a mystery to us, and we were too lazy/busy to do more research.

I’m typically pretty resourceful and I’d search above and beyond to get the information I want. However, the following years continued to be big transition times for my family and I, and learning more about ACA was not on the priority list. So, as a couple, we reasoned (and made a compromise) that we’d have to work more years to save up for full, out-of-pocket health insurance premiums and retire when we reach our late 40s or early 50s.

REFLECTIONS

I published the first post on this blog about a year ago (on September 18^th, 2016). Since then, my family and I have gone through lots of changes. Back then, I wrote in this article that my husband and I would be looking at early retirement in year 2018, while in our mid- and early-30s, respectively. Our estimated annual expenses would be $50,000. In a later post, where I shared about the 4% Withdrawal Rule and its relevance for my family, I mentioned that my family’s financial goal (a.k.a the amount in our net worth) was to reach 30X to 33X of our annual expenses.

As I’m writing this article, I’m happy to report that our total net worth has reached over the 33X number. The image below was captured on 9/11/2017 from our Personal Capital account, prior to the stock market opened. We use Personal Capital, a free financial tool, to track our net worth, view our investment performance, analyze our asset allocations and project and reevaluate our retirement goals. I wrote a comprehensive review of Personal Capital on another post. I encourage you to check it out. According to Google Analytics, that post is a readers favorites. I plan to do an update on this financial tool and share more recent images on the blog soon.

ms financial literacy Personal Capital score board

Now that this part of my family’s financial goal is reached, my husband and I have both arrived at the conclusion that it was time for him to join me in early retirement, too. September 8th, 2017, marked his last day of W-2 employment. This is a great financial milestone for my family. We became an early retiree family before our daughter turns three.

Note: In a more recent post, I shared that we created a “fun fund”, where we gave ourselves the permission to spend up to $60,000 per year. Of that $60,000, about 30% would go to travel and large disposable item purchases (you can see a list of our monthly expenses here). At this point, we are flexible pacing our annual expenses anywhere in between $40,000 to $60,000.