Why We Practice What We Preach (Part II)

July 22, 2010

Welcome back. I hope your time away from my blathering was enjoyable. So where was I? Oh that’s right, my wife wanting to retire in 5 years. Now keep in mind that as I was telling her we certainly could review where we are at and if it was possible, my internal dialogue was saying “Why bother? We don’t have enough money set aside yet.” But I shook off my negativity and started running our numbers.

The first obvious thing that we would have to do is move. No way we could afford our house and rental property on one income. So that’s where I told my wife where the first compromise would have to be made, and if we move and she’s retired I still want to live by the beach……so we agreed on Florida. At least she will always be warm!

The next item we looked at is should we keep our rental property and that decision is kind of in limbo as it is a function of whether we can refinance to get a better loan and rate. Please wish us luck.

Now remember it is my wife who wants to retire so we still will have my income to pay all our bills and enjoy the lifestyle we want. So to see if that will be enough, we both put together spreadsheets of where we spend our money and what we may be able to cut back on. This is when the reality of my wife’s goal of retiring started to hit us. IF we moved to a different location, IF we can refinance our rental property and IF we cut back on our expenses a tad, it is quite feasible that my wife can pull off the unthinkable; RETIRE IN 5 YEARS!!

So what’s the takeaway from this exercise? Sure I’m an expert at retirement planning and my wife and I believe that we are doing all we can but the reality of planning is that you don’t know for sure until you run hypothetical situations or as I call it, monitor your progress against your goal. What seemed like an unlikely occurrence at the time turned out to be a very realistic scenario, albeit with making some minor sacrifices but isn’t that something we should be thinking about anyway? I guess practicing what I preach pays off.

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