If you need the income, mcat, why would you retire prematurely? You’ll need to pay for health insurance and whatever other benefits may be provided by your employer. You talk frequently about financial concerns. If you aren’t able to retire early, don’t.
Where is the home you own located? Someone mentioned Texas. While that covers a lot of territory, a lot of companies are moving technology to Texas. You may have plenty of opportunity, especially if its in an area that fewer of the 20-somethings want to be.
It is not that I would like to retire prematurely. Rather, in my field of work, there is really very low job security, especially at our age. If I lose my job in the future, I may continue trying to find the next job, but it will likely be a challenge. There are also some other reasons why this is so, but I would rather not go into the details on a public forum.
You must know that many people are kind of “forced” to retire prematurely not under their control, i.e., involuntarily – just look at this statistics: how many people even started to collect their SS at 62. We count our blessings that we do not need to do that.
I have actually lost my job for a grand total of one time only in my whole life. This is a relatively a quite good record for a person in my field. I am not sure whether it is because I am really good at “dodging the bullet”, or it is just a dumb luck. (I guess the reason is mostly the latter.)
I really wish I would know more in whatever the 20-somethings may not know or may not be interested in pursuing (like COBOL? I am unfortunately not old enough to know this.) but it is still somewhat in demand in the job market. But this may not be the case for me.
It seems that I am unable to persuade my wife to go overseas to retire. I think it is mainly because she would not want to be too far away from our son. If I am able to, we could retire half a decade ago. It just costs so much to retire in the US before 65-66.
I would rather be not too specific about the location of our house. (Still know too many people in my real life there.) There could be some jobs in my field there, but there are definitely not that many as compared to the Silicon Valley. If I am really serious about finding the next job, I really should stay put. We will see what we will do, one day at a time.
It is true that I am risk averse, in my investment.
A friend of mine once told me that only those who have extra money that they do not need for a long time will invest in a good way. I am not one of those.
I think the “riskiest” investments I have ever had are either index funds or balanced fund, in my 401K. It is lucky that I have at least done this, which is the bulk of my nest egg. Hmm…it seems SP500 Index fund is not doing well recently. (I may have lost some % there recently.) But I am not going to “mess it up” now. Buy and hold!
Theoretically, if you have 25x annual spending in an S&P 500 index fund, you should be set with very high probability (basically with probability that no Great Depression-level event happens). Given you have SS coming at some point, you should be set with a lower amount than that. I’m sure you can calculate things out yourself though.
If the numbers aren’t adding up for you, the obvious suggestions are to move if possible to somewhere cheaper and to get rid of that storage unit (I’m gonna take a stab at the cost, $150 a month? The cost of storage units aren’t trivial.) Might be hard to move but if you pick the right place that could be the last time you ever do it.
If you can estimate, it’s probably worth trying to think about how long you and your wife expect to live. That might influence how much you really want to slim down between now and SS, as the longer you expect to live the later you want to take SS.
I’m 24 so I obviously can’t say much that’s any use to you but good luck.