Retirement Savings -- Countup

[disneysteve]

Thanks you too! It's nice counting up!

For sure. Even better is when you're already retired and still counting up like us. And if you follow through on your plan to live in places with a much lower cost of living for a few years, you'll be amazed how much your nest egg grows while you're minimizing the draw from it.

YTD our portfolio is up over $340,000 right now even though I only worked 46 hours this year before retiring.

[Randomsaver]

Retirement Account Savings . . . count it up.

I've a long waaaaaays to go . . 10 years including this year is my target.

Retirement Savings : $145K

I've been meaning to do this for so long....an update from when this thread started.

For me, I'm 51, planning on retiring at 56. My whole work life I had saved/been saving for 3 things:
- my primary residence (AKA the mortgage )
- retirement accounts (401K and IRA which I saved on with just enough to max the employer counterpart, so like 6.5% a year)
- pre-retirement account

The primary residence as some of you may know had been fully paid 2022 (remember my July 4 Independence Day celebration post in the other thread? )

The Retirement Accounts (RA) are quite small as it was not a priority. Around when I was in my early 40s when salary was starting to allow me to save more, I thought that I'd keep my saving on retirement accounts to a minimum and prioritize a Pre-retirement Account. That's the reason why my retirement savings is small.

The Pre-Retirement Account (PRA) was a 2-phase account. When I had my first post to this thread in 2019, I already had saved $145K. The first phase is to save for a retirement property...that way, my primary residence can be used by my kids down the line as an ancestral house, while I'm tucked in to my own retirement property enjoying life.

After saving some more and then zeroing out the PRA by purchasing my retirement condo last year, I have started this year the 2nd phase which is to now actually save for my COL for the age 56-60. After that I can start tapping to my RAs. I have now $23K on my PRA which I hope to grow to $35K by end of this year. Looks like I have a good 4 years of savings to do to budget my pre-retirement COL.

Hope you guys share updates as well, no rules, just free-form sharing. .

[Randomsaver]

For sure. Even better is when you're already retired and still counting up like us. And if you follow through on your plan to live in places with a much lower cost of living for a few years, you'll be amazed how much your nest egg grows while you're minimizing the draw from it.

YTD our portfolio is up over $340,000 right now even though I only worked 46 hours this year before retiring.

That's very nice. Happy for you DS. Correct, I plan to keep invested 80-20 when I stop working at 56.

[disneysteve]

The Retirement Accounts (RA) are quite small as it was not a priority. Around when I was in my early 40s when salary was starting to allow me to save more, I thought that I'd keep my saving on retirement accounts to a minimum and prioritize a Pre-retirement Account. That's the reason why my retirement savings is small.

I think this is a somewhat meaningless semantic distinction. If you are saving money for retirement, it's retirement savings regardless of whether it's in a "retirement account" like a 401k or Roth or 403b or it's in a taxable brokerage account not specifically designated as a retirement account. If it's for your retirement, it's retirement savings. Much of our portfolio is in taxable accounts because for most of my career I didn't have access to an employer-sponsored plan so we were limited to funding a traditional or Roth IRA and everything else was taxable. It was still all retirement savings.

[Randomsaver]

The other thing is I decided on a 60:40 Roth-Trad on my 401 and my IRA is all Roth. I don't know if I did the right thing or not but yeah I paid taxes early on my RA so, much of RA balance of $328K is post-tax.

[Randomsaver]

I think this is a somewhat meaningless semantic distinction. If you are saving money for retirement, it's retirement savings regardless of whether it's in a "retirement account" like a 401k or Roth or 403b or it's in a taxable brokerage account not specifically designated as a retirement account. If it's for your retirement, it's retirement savings. Much of our portfolio is in taxable accounts because for most of my career I didn't have access to an employer-sponsored plan so we were limited to funding a traditional or Roth IRA and everything else was taxable. It was still all retirement savings.

I beg to differ. I was able to use my PRA for buying a retirement condo. Also, I plan to retire pre-retirement age of 62 so I need to budget something for that age 56-60. It's the flexibility to use it now as opposed to 62+.

[disneysteve]

I beg to differ. I was able to use my PRA for buying a retirement condo. Also, I plan to retire pre-retirement age of 62 so I need to budget something for that age 56-60. It's the flexibility to use it now as opposed to 62+.

Again, it's just semantics. To me, every dollar we put away for the future was retirement money unless designated otherwise (like for a new car or vacation or something) regardless of where we stashed it. I retired at 59 though past 59.5 so we could access our retirement accounts if needed but the plan is to live mostly on the non-retirement accounts (except for the RMD from my inherited IRAs) for a while and let the tax-sheltered stuff continue to grow. Even if you stashed all of your savings in cash under the mattress, it would still be "retirement" money if that's what you plan to use it for.

[scfr]

Again, it's just semantics.

I think it's more than just semantics. It can be helpful and/or interesting to keep funds separated, even if just mentally. Certainly for tax planning purposes (those pre-tax funds are not worth nearly as much as the post-tax or tax-free ones), but for other reasons too.

An example of how I do this is that within my brokerage account I have several sub-accounts that include the labels "Rollover IRA - Company abc" and "Rollover IRA - Company xyz" and "SEP IRA - name of business I owned, long since closed." Could they be combined? Sure! And I might do that before I start taking withdrawals. But for now I just like knowing where the funds originated. It's part of my financial history. It may not be completely rational, but knowing where I came from, and how far I've come, gives me some sense of accomplishment and helps me figure out where I'm going.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

randomsaver did it make sense to buy the retirement place cash? Instead of cash flowing it now when you are still working and have the cash?

[Randomsaver]

randomsaver did it make sense to buy the retirement place cash? Instead of cash flowing it now when you are still working and have the cash?

It was for me. I have no choice because I bought this outside US and US lenders rarely lend for those.

[Randomsaver]

401K Retirement Savings: $ 277K (market pushing up further)
IRA Retirement Savings: $ 55K
Subtotal Retirement Savings: : $ 332K
Pre-Retirement Savings: $ 25K (I noticed I had this labeled prior as "Early Retirement Savings" when what I meant was it was Pre-Retirement Savings to be used for Retirement starting age 56 and to be zeroed out by age 60 -- when technically "retirement" is not yet available as early retirement is 62 as per Social Security Admin. I think that was where the disconnect was between me and DisneySteve).


My Forecasted Monthly Retirement Check Amounts, if to retire starting 2025 (actual withdrawal can only start in Jul of 2031):
401 : $ 1.33K
IRA : $ 0.26K
SS : $ 1.47K
Tot : $ 3.06K

The mood is buy little if pullback is little and buy big with pullback is big.

[Randomsaver]

401K Retirement Savings: $ 268K (market correction)
IRA Retirement Savings: $ 54K
Subtotal Retirement Savings: : $ 322K
Pre-Retirement Savings: $ 25K


My Forecasted Monthly Retirement Check Amounts, if to retire starting 2025 (actual withdrawal can only start in Jul of 2031):
401 : $ 1.30K
IRA : $ 0.26K
SS : $ 1.47K
Tot : $ 3.03K
End-Goal : $3.50K
The mood is buy little if pullback is little and buy big with pullback is big.

[Jluke]

This week’s pull back is after a huge run up, so are we really - back to April (random guess)

[kork13]

This week’s pull back is after a huge run up, so are we really - back to April (random guess)

Actually, it's just back to early July. Even at the lowest point, it was only to the level of mid-June. So no panic necessary.

[srblanco7]

Actually, it's just back to early July. Even at the lowest point, it was only to the level of mid-June. So no panic necessary.

For sure - no reason to panic.

Looks like we’re only off about 2% from our peak investment account balance YTD. As the S&P500 has pulled back, it’s been somewhat offset by recent gains in small and mid cap funds.