[ksherlock]

Your savings rate is a lifestyle choice.

eg, let's simplify and assume spherical cows, no inflation and no ROI. If you save 50% of your income, 1 year of work is 1 year of retirement. If you save 25% of your income, 3 years of work is 1 year of retirement.

So you should probably read bogleheads, live below your means, and max out your 401k/403b/roth ira/etc with low-cost index funds. or just yolo it on stonks and hope for diamond hands.

[rramadass]

This is the correct base from which all plans for "retirement" should start from.

1) Eliminate/Simplify/Lower all your "wants". You will be surprised as to how much you can save.

2) Focus only on your "needs" for existence i.e. what you actually need to live when you are 70.

3) Modify your lifestyle immediately; specifically Diet and Health in the light of the above two goals viz. proper work/life balance, proper diet, proper sleep, proper exercise. Health _is_ Wealth when it comes to old age since much of your retirement money will go to healthcare when you are older. Control/Plan-for/Manage this now.

4) Get your entire family to understand and buy-into the above.

Everything else is gravy.

[raw_anon_1111]

I don’t suggest people put off everything until they are old. Enjoy life today. Take the vacation, enjoy the concert, etc. It’s about balance. Of course you should save/invest.

I am not saying buy the expensive house, cars etc.

[rramadass]

Not what i meant.

The idea is to make sure that you can guarantee (barring unforeseens) the absolute minimum that you need to live before anything else. Once this is done everything else becomes a choice and you can indulge (or not) as you please.

Life is all about Risk Management and given the uncertain world we live in, you need to ensure that you are not totally dependent on the future performance of the Economic System. "Enjoy Life Today/YOLO" etc. should not become an excuse to not think realistically and plan for your own/family's future with definite guarantees.

Nassim Taleb's ideas about Mediocristan vs. Extremistan, Power Laws/Pareto Distribution, Barbell investment strategy, Black Swan events etc. are all relevant here.

Savings/Investments etc. ideas from Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement are also very relevant here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement

The Objective is to avoid total ruin when things go wrong, but have the resiliency to bear the loss and bounce back or be anti-fragile enough to get better.

[raw_anon_1111]

If the economic system today collapses, no realistic amount money will save you.

[rramadass]

I don't mean "collapse" but a gradual/abrupt slide downward towards another equilibrium than that expected from earlier projections.

A good current example is what is happening to the economies of many countries due to Trump's tariffs.

[raw_anon_1111]

I re read your initial reply more carefully and we are doing just that.

Because of a combination of poor life choices between 2000-2008 and purposeful decisions between 2012-2020 early retirement or even retirement before my wife and I are eligible for Medicare is mostly out of the question unless we move out of the US - we are seriously exploring this possibility and we will be in one of those countries for six weeks starting in late February.

That being said, knowing those are my constraints. I have made some purposeful decisions.

First I pivoted to cloud consulting working full time for consulting departments /companies where there are plenty of remote opportunities, experience and age is an asset and not a liability, and the pay is better than enterprise dev. They also can’t outsource customer facing consultants who have to fly to customer’s sites.

Second, I “retired my wife” in 2020 so she could pursue her hobbies and we could travel extensively while we are healthy and it can be funded by income.

That has the knock on effect that we don’t need as much money for retirement because we would have already gotten our expensive travel out of the way by then.

Third, we aggressively reduced expenses when my youngest step son graduated in 2020 - we sold our big house in the burbs and bought a condo 1/3 the size in central Florida close to Disney. Florida is a state tax free state.

Now between making decent money and low expenses, we can live comfortably day to day, do the digital nomad thing off an on (and rent our home out as vacation rental while we are gone).