First Retirement Milestone

I feel like it's taken forever to get here - seeing as how I've worked since I was 15 and a half...but we're here now.

Just as of this past month, my wife and I combined broke what I considered our first major retirement milestone: $100K saved. Between 2 401K accounts, 2 Roth IRA accounts and 1 joint savings account.

I figured this was a blog more steered towards my #1 goal in life and it's been some time since I've updated everyone on my/our status. Well, not really, I guess I did talk about the market falling off less than 2 months ago. And I still think we've got farther to drop once all of this stimulus runs it's course through the market...

But I wanted to mention this to everyone because even though you may think we're doing alright - I'm unfortunately not as far ahead as I'd like to be.

This is one of my favorite retirement calculators.

Years ago I wanted to retire by 42. Then I kind of pushed it back seeing as how that was 15 years from now. Sure, I can still get lucky, but the chances of making it there are slim.

So I pushed it back a few years. I figured 45.

But the spending ended up being a lot higher in my life than I expected it to be (unfortunately not much of my doing) and my income hasn't really picked up until lately.

Now, since my layoff at the beginning of August I've decided 45 may just be a pipe dream (amazing how quickly I can change my dates - and all within a few years). I'm now pushing back my retirement age (for both me and my wife) to 52. I know, that is so far away - and from everyone I've spoken with that is nearing that age (or older) they laugh at me and say "that's so young!".

I know it is - but it's not really "retirement". It's "financial freedom". So every day instead of having to go to work, I will want to go work. And if I don't want to? No big deal. And with the days zooming by lately (anyone see where the past 2 months went?) I think my 30s and 40s will be gone before I know it (very scary).

So, per the calculator I linked, we have an 86% chance of making it to our goal of retirement at 52 and not out living our money with a life expectancy of 90. But that's assuming so many things (which is also scary). That assumes we continue to both have jobs and earn good money. It assumes a 7% yearly return on investment (IMO unlikely). It assumes inflation won't run rampant - which I think it will even within the next 3-5 years.

There are so many "ifs" right now that it's an extremely daunting task trying to account for them all. So the best I can do is just to continue to check off those milestones. Next up, $250K, $500K then our first cool million. My mini-goal is to be a millionaire in cash by the time I'm 40. It's unlikely but a boy's gotta have dreams right?