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Hi all. Hard to believe I’ve been retired for 5 years. Seems like yesterday that you guys were holding my hand as I was leaving Ameriprise. DH and I are looking at buying a rental property to add an income stream and to give us more levers to pull in managing income vs taxes. We had rentals...

Wondering if anyone has an Oculus Quest VR headset? Hubby and I both got one and we love the multi-player games. And we'd to really like to find more adults to play PokerStars VR with. Tons of little brats running around making the game decidedly not fun. If you play and want to add us as...

We've now been retired for four years and because of the ACA cliff are able to withdraw significantly less than we had planned. I'm considering doing a large one-time sale from Vanguard to put us back in line with our planned spending while also enabling us to do some traveling which was part...

Hi everyone. I use several calculators to verify that our retirement portfolio spending is on track but I have a question about modeling. Because of the ACA cliff, we're choosing to keep spending artificially low. We're finding that our lower spending lifestyle is still very enjoyable so it's...

Curious if anyone knows what the VATX dividend dropped from $0.37360 in March to $0.2647 per share in June. I've looked through all of the documentation and googled but no luck.

Today marks the 8th anniversary of my very first post here which was on how to leave Ameriprise’s clutches. I thought I’d give a quick update on this wonderful financial birthday. In October my husband will have been retired 3 years and my 3rd anniversary is next January. He retired at 49 and I...

When running i-ORP, it's returning a Yield that is 1.5x what I'm getting from Vanguard. I've changed the i-ORP "Stock Dividend Rate" field to be exactly what Vanguard shows for Total Stock Market Index Fund. What am I not understanding?

Just paid $79 for a one-year subscription to ESPlanner's online retirement tool. Relieved to see that I now have 3 points of reference on safe spending and they all agree. What I found interesting with ESPlanner was that the maximized plan did increase our discretionary spending but at the cost...

I estimated capital gains for 2018 and when I updated our application the subsidy went down as expected. What I didn't expect was that the insurance plan changed too. Instead of a zero deductible it's now 6,000 per person! Our income will be $2000 per month until December of next year. So...

Day 2 in modeling taxes for next year. New question - how do I determine how the sell of various amounts of mutual funds will impact our healthcare subsidy? I've found the Kaiser subsidy calculator but it is wildly inaccurate on how much our current subsidy is so I don't trust the numbers.

This is our first full year of retirement. I'm considering pulling some money out of investments and just ran Tax Caster to determine tax impact but I'm not understanding the result. Income from pension and dividends = $24000 No taxes paid this year. If we stop there we owe zero taxes in 2017...

We're in the process of moving to Florida so are looking at the various ACA health insurance options (we get a big subsidy so ACA is the only option we're considering). We're going with Florida Blue but we have a choice between 3 networks. The preferred network, cost wise, doesn't cover us if...

We've pulled the trigger and are moving from Vegas to The Villages. The house in Vegas is mortgage-free and we have the release of lien document but I've been through the paperwork and don't see anything but the release (like a deed?) We've never had a mortgage-free house before much less sold...

A couple of years ago I found a document called "Big Book of Facts" that was a fill-in-the-blank document for everything about your life so that your executor had what they needed to manage your estate. It included financial information, passwords, account #s, life insurance info, mortgage...

I may require a discectomy. I've lost partial use of my right leg, surgeon thinks it's a ruptured disc pressing on a nerve root. I've done a Google search on the surgeon and have a range of 1 star for supposedly screwing up a hip replacement to several 5 star reviews for people that he helped...

DH LOVES crunchy stuff, but not of the veggie variety. Think chips, fried stuff, etc. I've been thinking of getting an air fryer but thought I'd check in to see who has one and whether you still liked it after the new wore off. If you have one and like it, what brand?

Wanted to share a book that I found that is helping me with the transition from "Doing" to "Being". It's called "A Year to Clear". The book is formatted so that you have a short segment (a page or less) to read every day for 365 days. To have the biggest impact it recommends you keep a journal...

Just passed the one-year retired mark. We worked hard for 6 years to be able to get to this point but I'm slowly going stir crazy! First year retired was horrendous. Lost my dad the day I retired, then my mom in September, and between the two parents we lost both dogs. So year one wasn't a good...

FIL has been a widow now for 2 years this month. He's met a woman and after 2 weeks they are talking about getting married! DH and I are freaking out. We know he's lonesome, but 2 weeks is a little soon! He lives across the country so we haven't met her and we know nothing about her family...

DH and I are in a REIT private partnership that is now closing out. We received our first check today from the partnership close out and I'm a bit confused by the annual report that accompanied the check. Using hypothetical numbers here is what occurred: 1. We put $50k into the partnership...

It's been one helluva week. I got laid off on Monday (I volunteered for it) and my dad passed away at 7 pm that night. He's had Pulmonary Fibrosis for some time but he was doing ok. Sunday afternoon I got a call that he was in the hospital and wasn't expected to make it. I hopped on a plane to...

While I'm sure there are many forums I could turn to to find the info, I thought I'd come to my trusted FIRE folks first. DH and I are headed out for our first extended RV trip next week. We'll be gone for 3 months. I've been doing research on what all we should do to leave our home and plan to...

I just had my very final 'annual review' of my working career. These little meetings are usually a non-event but I'm floored at what just happened. I've volunteered to be laid off on January 11 (my company is letting 30k people go). Since I'm being released I had no expectations of a bonus. I...

Ok, so I'm not new to this forum but in less than a month I'll be new to retirement. I've worked hard to get here ("Leaving Ameriprise") but now that I'm here my stomach does a back flip every time I think about January 11 (the day that I'll be told I'm being laid off). I've volunteered to...

I'm planning to retire in December and have one last puzzle piece related to health insurance to understand before pulling the trigger. When I apply for HI through the exchange in December do I provide an estimate of my 2016 income to determine the policy price or do I give my 2015 income? I...