Hi there & Welcome,
My name is Christoph. At the end of 2017 I turned 50 years old. I think I am ready for retirement mentally ;-), but I have come to realize that financially this looks very different right now. So, what to do?
My wife Simone and I hatched out a plan about how and when we want to leave corporate America behind and retire. Maybe it is not necessarily retirement right away, but a step away from the 9 to 5 crowd. Maybe travel, work remotely and enjoy life a bit more. The sooner this can happen, the better I would say.
Generation X – yep, that is us. I never thought of it that way, but that’s what we are. We are part of the group between the baby boomers and the millennials. Accordingly we want to make sure this blog and the associated social media accounts provide helpful information about personal finance for generation x.
Fortunately we are not loaded with debt. We do not have any credit card debt nor do we have a car loan. We have a mortgage that we are on the hook for, but that is about it. We both do have a 401K (with company match) and we have a IRAs. Both accounts have a decent amount of money in it, but it is far from being enough – at least in my opinion. We also do have an emergency fund, but our 13-year old son is working hard trying to spend my money to meet his “instant gratification” needs.
Now we decided that it is time to put a date down of some sort to start our retirement. We are planning to use this website to detail our journey and to hold our selves accountable. We have two milestones marked on the future calendar.
- Our son’s High School graduation
- Our son’s (potential) graduation from college
Those are the 2 dates we are working backwards from. We have not decided yet if we want to maintain a home base for our son when (or if) he heads off to college. While we want to support him and help as much as possible for college, we are not sure yet how all this looks like. We do have a 529 College Fund for him, but it also depends on what he wants to study and what school he wants to go to. He will probably need to take on some student loans, but again – we will try to help as much as possible.
About that early retirement …
I mentioned before that we are not financially ready to retire just yet. As a matter of fact, I worry about not having enough money for a good retirement, so it is crucial for us to take action.
Take action
We read too many stories about people being ill-prepared for retirement, many of them never being able to retire really. Lack of savings, low-wage jobs for their entire life, cashing out the 401K plan, and other stuff – that is scary. We want to take that as motivation and be able to retire and live comfortably.
This can only happen if we make the right moves now. I know there are quite a few people who retired in their 30s or early 40s. That whole frugalist movement is fantastic in my opinion, but I can also not turn back time. So, our time is now. We will use this website to hold our selves accountable and to also publicly show what we are doing. That type of public pressure should help with keeping us motivated, too.
This website and related social media channels were created to put our plan out into public. We want to pressure our self to make good decisions. We will make mistakes, but hopefully not many and ones that we can correct.
If you want to be able to follow our adventures of getting ready for retirement, please subscribe to our Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram accounts.
What does “Retirelicious” stand for?
Well, you know the word “delicious” and “-licious” is being used in many ways to expand certain terms. We created the term “retirelicious” – let’s get out of the rat race and retire with fun.
Disclaimer: We are not a financial advisers. What might work for us, will not necessarily work for you. Please duplicate what we potentially show here with caution. Or better, educate yourself before making any financial decisions.