MRGALT2U said:
I don't quite understand this. The decision hangs on whether you pick up another 2.5% by January? Why? I can't see why 2.5% up or down would have any real impact. I could spend 2.5% of my total NW (not much)
and hardly notice it. I certainly wouldn't let such a small move effect my
ER planning. You should control the timing, not some future unknown and
uncontrollable event.
JG
I agree that 2.5% is noise. I'm quite confident I'm good to go now, but will cantinue to work until Jan 3 because:
- it gets me a few more quarters of SS contributions
- it gets me a few more % in pension entitlements
- we're saving ~$8K/month now
- those three items, plus a few % of market return get's us safely into the magic 95% safe number per FIREcalc. In my "How This Is All Going To Work" opus to my wife I mentioned that a
95% SWR x 95% last survivor mortality* = > 99% effective SWR.
*55 years for us
Believe me, it WOULD matter to my wife if I punched out a few months early on the "Magic Number"
- it gets me 5 new weeks of vacation (I haven't used any vacation time this year, so between vacation entitlement, holidays, maybe a few mental health days, cable guy appointments, runny nose days, etc, I'm looking at a pretty nice % of work days/off-days at this point)
- I
might have a bit more clarity on the appropriate amount of reduction I should use for our SSI entitlements by January. (I'm chopping SSA projections by 25% in my spreadsheet now, but I think that's probably a bit too conservative. I'm 45 now and figure on a ~$65K income in retirement, and I can't imagine the AARP letting Congress cut bennies to members of the massive boomer generation struggling to get by on mere $65K by 25%. What I think might happen is we get a half-a$$ed solution in 2005-2006, and have to do it all over agian in 10-15 years. By the time the next SS "fix" takes place we'll probably be in the "hands-off" (>55 or 60) age group. So I think '05-'06 solution is worth knowing. If Congress can't get it's act together by January I'll be comfortable punching out based on the 25% whack.
- my current workload is manageable, the projects are fairly interesting (maybe another patent award or two), and I don't foresee any uncomfortable encounters with any upper mgmttypes who matter in the next several months.
- it allows me to exercise my remaining stock options in '06, getting away from 2005 AMT
Does that help?
Cb