Early Retirement Planning - Do's And Don'ts

Flyhigher · Feb 17, 2021

nuss said: ↑

@Flyhigher- I am sorry to hear about your loss! Your parents are looking at you and smiling! What wonderful kids they have raised!

So glad to learn that you and your husband started your journey as MS/ PhD- graduate school in general. A lot of people say that it is impossible to save on a grad student salary but you two are a shining example of that anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

It is important to have a life partner who shares similar life goals. My husband is like your husband. He influenced me to be a better saver. When we met he was doing PhD and was already saving in ROTH IRA. I didn’t even know about optional retirement plans. I started reading about personal finances when I realized how much I didn’t know.

Keep writing! I would love to hear more from you!
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Thanks for encouraging @nuss .
Yes your right having a partner who stands like a supporting pillar with you always makes life wonderful.
I wish you guys keep supporting one another, love unconditionally each other.

EverydayBloom · Feb 17, 2021

Flyhigher said: ↑

Financial independence for me means getting out of the rat race and choosing how you spend your time, choosing what job you do not based on salary but based on enjoyment and ultimately it means living the rest of the life free from the pressure of relying on a salary to pay the bill.

Retire Early means for me to escape from that stressful life, relax, travel, learn and do something which I love and always wanted to try.

Planning for FI-
Our rule is No debts. If we cannot buy it cash then we will not buy it.

1) Planning and targeting -
we did targeted for a number and decided to move down to the place immediately where we wanted to settle.
Usually, experts say it’s 25x rule and 4% safe rule.

2) Emergency fund -
Kept aside 6 months of salary as emergency funds for purely health-related, any other family emergencies.

3)Saving and Investing as Priority -
Every year both of us Invested in 401k, IRA, HSA till it maxed out. Every month we targeted to save 70-75% from our take-home salary and invested in CD,real estate, stocks and index funds.

4) Earn more and side hustles -
Earning more allowed us to increase savings and speed up our financial independence goals. We always had housemates in our house. we did house flips, both fast and slow flips, Airbnb’s, Freelance projects, Bounty/hackathons, rental properties. Sell and resell everything and anything on Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, eBay, etc. We negotiated salaries, being a bilingual and having certifications according to market trend helped to find better jobs and salary

5) Living below our means-
We stay away from consumer culture and lived a minimalist life.

Finding Ways to Keep big Expenses Low -
Car - Initially we bought a certified second-hand car which fits in our budget and low maintenance cost and gives great mileage. Then a few years back we sold that car and got a PHEV for that we got a federal rebate+local rebate+employee discount
Insurance - staying with the same insurance for more than 10 years and bundling car and home insurance helped us to get a good discount.
Be it a car, insurance, internet or phone by negotiating and bundling helps to bring down the cost.
Housing cost- as soon we married we bought a condo which was fitting in our savings and we moved in that saved us rent/mortgage.

Finding Ways to Keep small Expenses Low- Because I believe little things add up like
Giving haircuts at home for both DH and me. Strict monthly grocery and budget plans, grocery shopping hackings, Couponing and looking for deals on most of the things which helped to save so much. No memberships/subscriptions. Smarter ways to save electricity bill(in 2018 we shifted to complete solar power). Saying no to invitations from friends and coworkers to fancy restaurants. Even if we travel for work/trips we preferred to take home packed food. Using a bike to work most of the day. DH mostly worked from home or traveled. Only on rainy days, grocery shopping, airport pickup drops, or any other work we took out the car, and also my workplace was 2.9miles from home then back then. We always believed traveling to work for an hour on daily basis doesn’t make sense because we consume a lot of time, energy, gas, car life.

6) Credit card hacking and other -
Our less likely to engage in expensive credit card behaviors and use it mainly as cash back/ reward points earner. We just use one credit card(boa) for everything like online/in-store/gas/restaurants/HOA/insurance which gives 3.75%+ cash back, Lowe’s credit card only for home improvement projects which give 5% off, boa travel card for any outside USA use and united for flights. We have the habit of paying credit card bills on weekly basis which helps to scan all the charges and find out any suspicious charges. Along with this we always maintain fixed amount in our bank account to take advantage of boa’s preferred rewards program benefits, we use cash back apps for every online purchases and also we purchase discounted gift cards for major expenses.

7)Take advantage of Company reimbursement programs-
Most of the companies pay telephone bill reimbursements to full-time employees or on projects support teams. Both had the option to either go with the company paid separate phone or use our own existing phones we chose with our existing phones so our phone bills were covered by our companies. Yes of course there is extra work that comes with that.
Reimbursement programs for education/certifications

8)Travel Fund -
Instead of considering travel costs in the monthly budget, we kept aside some amount regularly solely for travel made us to calculate and plan easier

9)Other costs-
Every alternate year either we visit India or in-laws visit us. And also since we live in Florida.Tourist place. We have family, friends visit us often so we plan our monthly budget ahead and buy gifts ahead whenever I see good deals.

We learned to be mindful of where our money was going and spending wisely by evaluating whether something was a need or just a want also kept more money in our pocket. The bonus was it helped us stop accumulating more stuff and taught us to repurpose already owned items.
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Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us @Flyhigher. If you don't feel I am intruding, do you have kids? how did you plan for their future? Are you leaving any generational wealth for them?

I am sorry about your loss of parents, they will be blessing you and your siblings from heavens and are proud for sure!!

Flyhigher · Feb 17, 2021

EverydayBloom said: ↑

Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us @Flyhigher. If you don't feel I am intruding, do you have kids? how did you plan for their future? Are you leaving any generational wealth for them?

I am sorry about your loss of parents, they will be blessing you and your siblings from heavens and are proud for sure!!
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Thank you so much @EverydayBloom .
Feel free to ask any questions.We don’t have kids. We are childfree by choice.
We are planning to leave generational wealth to our niece/nephews/orphanage.

EverydayBloom · Feb 17, 2021

Flyhigher said: ↑

Thanks for encouraging @nuss .
Yes your right having a partner who stands like a supporting pillar with you always makes life wonderful.
I wish you guys keep supporting one another, love unconditionally each other.
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Totally agree with you on this. Personal finance as a couple give so much room for growth, open financial talks are strong pillars for family financial success!!

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Early Retirement Planning - Do's And Don'ts

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