I wrote a long post earlier today and when I hit submit it disappeared so I'll try to recreate it (and I'm doing it in my word processor this time just in case).

It's not quite time for the year-end wrap up post but figured I'd give some updates.

All is going pretty well. I'm finishing up my first full year of “semi-retirement”. I'm really not sure what else to call it. I went per diem in August 2022 meaning I no longer have a set schedule or required hours. Technically I am required to work 24 hours every 12 weeks but unless I consistently miss that mark, nobody will say anything. I've mostly worked 8 hrs/wk this year, some weeks 4, a couple of weeks 12, and several weeks zero. My plan for 2024 is to cut back to 4 hrs/wk. I just chose my January shifts yesterday so 16 hours scheduled for the month.

My wife is doing well and finally back in good health. Not 100% and never will be after 2 back surgeries and a lung surgery but her most recent labs had her inflammatory marker (C-reactive protein) normal for the first time since this began in early 2021. She has been crocheting up a storm, did quite well at a local craft fair in October, and has made numerous other sales, especially to our daughter's co-workers who keep ordering stuff from her.

Our daughter is enjoying her job and they love her. She's gradually taken on more responsibilities and helped them streamline workflow and improve processes.

My mom turned 93 in August. She's having more trouble with her back and an MRI in October showed a new herniated disc. She's had a couple more epidural injections since then but those really don't help. The only thing that helps a herniated disc, other than surgery, is time. It can take 4-6 months or more for those to heal. It's made it harder for her to manage and we finally increased her aide to 3 days a week and we are going over there more frequently to help out.

My ebay business is cruising along well. I have a running thread on the forums where I give monthly totals and periodic updates if anyone wants details. I enjoy going to the estate sales and finding treasures that I can flip for good profits. This year I had several of my all-time best sales so I must be on the right track.

Between my wife's health and my mom's, we didn't do any major traveling this year. We did try to do a number of day trips and earlier in the year a few overnight getaways. We have a trip planned to Riviera Maya in late February. I'm hoping things are stable here and that we are able to go as scheduled. It's a group of us going to celebrate a friend's 50^th birthday.

Speaking of birthdays, my wife turned 60 last Sunday and we had a party for her the day before at a local distillery that we really like. The 3 of us along with 14 friends had a good time celebrating her.

The other thing we did this past week was sign up for new health insurance through the ACA. The premium will be about $1,000 less than we've been paying on COBRA though the out of pocket costs will be higher so that will be offset somewhat.

I'm looking forward to tallying up the year-end numbers for our portfolio, our spending, my ebay business, and everything else. At this point, I've got a pretty firm grasp on it all already but want to see the final numbers.

I guess that's all for now. I'll post again in January with a full 2023 wrap up.

I reviewed our 8/31 Vanguard statements this morning. Year to date as of 8/31/23, our Vanguard accounts generated a combined $37,135.13 in investment income (interest, dividends, capital gains). If I extrapolate that out (which isn't quite how it works), that would mean about $55,700 for the year.

About 68% of our total portfolio is with Vanguard. I haven't looked at the other 32%, and a lot of that is taxable mutual funds that will pay out most of their income in December, but let's say another 20K comes from there.

That would mean around $75,000 total portfolio income for the year. I'm on track to make about $72,000 at work, though that might come in lower as I'm thinking about working even less than I already do. Add another $8,000 from ebay. That brings us to $155,000 for the year approximately. That should exceed our spending, which is partly why I'm considering working fewer hours. I think more like $130-140,000 would cover everything.

Since this is the first full year that I'm per diem, I'm really trying to see where everything falls. I won't know fully until after we do our 2023 taxes next spring, though.

I see that others have been posting similar things so I'll add mine.

Numbers are as of 6/30/23

Our portfolio is up by $183,259.19. That still puts us $69,454.13 behind where we were on 12/31/21 but at least there's been a decent recovery. Total now stands at $3,232.879.01.

For the first 6 months of the year, our portfolio income came to $30,244.20 (interest, dividends, capital gains). If that extrapolates out for the year, that will be about $60,500 in income, plus any year-end distributions which are always unpredictable. Thanks to higher interest rates, that's higher than the number I had used in my planning and projections. Of course, that also means a bigger tax bill since much of that is taxable, but that's okay. I'd rather make the money and pay the taxes.

Otherwise, things are cruising along about the same. Spending was on track, though in the past few weeks we've had some big expenses like a couple of car repairs, new appliances, and some plumbing work, but those were all one-off things.

I'm not very good at this blogging thing.

Life is cruising along okay. Since my last post in February, my wife was in the hospital again in March for a flare up of the infection around her spine. She had surgery to remove the hardware put it last year in case that was the source of lingering infection. She then did 9 weeks of IV antibiotics (as well as having a drain in the abscess for 6 weeks) and is now on daily oral antibiotics for at least a year. She has been seen by her spine surgeon, 2 different cardiothoracic surgeons, a neurosurgeon, and her infectious disease doctor. Everyone agrees that surgery to get to the abscess isn't indicated. With the hardware out, they feel her body will resolve what remains. She's getting labs every couple of weeks and has a CT scheduled for August. The really good news is she feels terrific, the best she has since the whole back issue started in fall of 2021. She's not 100% yet but she's doing PT and getting back to the gym and overall feels pretty normal.

I continue to work per diem, mostly doing 8 hours a week in the form of 2 four-hour shifts, usually Saturday and Sunday mornings but occassionally a weekday shift. I like the weekends best because the pay is much higher.

I'm still actively selling on ebay. Year to date I've had sales of about $6,000 gross/$4,000 net which is ahead of my goal of $500/month net. I logged my 4th highest sale ever a couple of weeks ago selling an item for $477.77 that I bought a week earlier for $8. Back in March I had my 3rd highest sale at $499. I go to one or two estate sales nearly every week and really enjoy that.

We had a big household expense this week. Our dryer started making a weird noise a few days ago. I opened it up yesterday to see if it was a DIY project I wanted to tackle. I didn't definitely identify the issue but I think it is a problem with the drum rollers. Fixing those means fully disassembling the unit, taking off the belts, removing the drum, etc. I just don't want to work that hard on a 10-year-old dryer so I agreed it was time for a new one. Of course, DW figured we should buy a new washer while we're at it. That's just as old, or maybe older, has rust around the top of the tub, and sometimes doesn't drain right after a cycle. I've DIY'ed that one before to fix something else (door switch assembly) so it's about time. We headed to Lowe's today and bought a new set. All in with delivery and removal and hoses and such, it came to about $1,500. We went with the pretty basic ones, not the ones with all the fancy electronics and stuff. Those are supposed to come on Thursday. While we were there, we also bought a new water cooler. Ours is pretty old and the great feature of the new one is that it is bottom-loading. I don't have to carry and flip the bottle onto it anymore, which occasionally results in some water spilling around it. That was another $200.

Otherwise things are doing pretty well. My mom is still plugging along at almost 93. Slowly declining which is hard to watch and deal with but such is life. Our daughter just celebrated 1 year at her job. She's stressed a lot which has been aggravated by her therapist being on maternity leave the past few months. Thankfully she starts back in therapy in 2 weeks. I'm hoping that gets her back on track fairly quickly.

That's enough for now. I'll try and update more regularly. I just forget about doing it.

DW went down to get the laundry on Thursday and the freezer was beeping which generally means we left the door open... except the door was closed. So the temp was too high for some reason. She opened it and things were still frozen but a couple of things weren't as solid as they should be. I told her to just crank up the temp setting and leave it be (I was at work).

Of course, that didn't solve the problem. We moved some stuff into the upstairs freezer and the little freezer in the bar fridge but we will end up having to trash a bunch of stuff ($$).

I went online today to shop for a new one. Found one I wanted at Lowe's but the website showed it wouldn't be available until September. Fortunately, I knew that the website isn't always accurate, so I took a ride over to their nearest store. They didn't have one but their system showed that another area store did. I went there and sure enough they had one in stock.

I bought it right away. I even signed up for Lowe's credit card because it saved me $100. The soonest they can deliver is Wednesday but we're fine without it until then.

Just $700 we weren't expecting to be spending plus the cost of replacing the food that we lost.

It's always something.

We did something today that we haven't done for 25 years - bought a new bed. DW has been wanting a new mattress for ages but I've put it off because I'm cheap and sleep just fine on the one we have. However since she hurt her back in October, she hasn't been able to sleep in bed. She just can't get comfortable and it doesn't give her enough support. She's been sleeping downstairs on the loveseat propped up with pillows. Not a good long term solution. We were hoping she'd be better by now but since she's not, it was time to go another route.

She did a bunch of research and decided on a hybrid memory foam/spring mattress. The main thing would be an adjustable base so she could raise the head of the bed rather than propping up on pillows. Honestly, I'll like that too as watching TV in bed or even doing stuff on my phone means propping up awkwardly which tends to hurt my neck.

We headed off to a local shop today. They were still running their Presidents Day sale. We tried several options and agreed on one and placed the order. It should be delivered on Tuesday. We got split twin XLs since we have a king bed but need to be able to adjust them independently so she can sleep propped up and I can sleep flat. Of course, that raised the price, but it's the only workable solution.

After lunch, I made a pot of chili as we were out. That will be dinner tonight and 5 containers went into the freezer.

Ebay has been busy. I'm up to 82 active listings. My 90-day sales total is $1,039. My current goal is to make at least $200/mo after expenses and YTD I'm already at $505 so I should have no trouble passing $600 before the end of March. I already have $21 in bids right now.

Although the primary goal is to clear out the basement and garage, I've also started going to estate sales, being very selective in what I buy to resell. Two weeks ago, I went to my first one and bought 6 items for $14. I've already sold 2 for $40. Thursday I went to one and spent $3 for one item which I sold last night for $25. Not a bad track record so far.

Things are cruising along reasonably well. I've adjusted well to working part time. At first it didn't seem much different. It took me a few weeks to adjust my schedule and stop feeling like I had to cram things into the 3 days I was off since I now have a whole 4th day free. Plus 2 days a week I don't go in until 1pm so I've got those mornings free now too.

Still, I'm constantly running the numbers to see when it is reasonable for me to drop to per diem and just work when I want to. I'm thinking that if I can pick up at least enough shifts to earn what we will be spending on health insurance, that would be perfect.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my blog (I know I've talked about it on the forums) but my wife developed back trouble at the end of October so we've been dealing with that. She's had 3 epidural injections and is having facet joint injections on Friday. She's better than she was but still nowhere near normal. Because of that, I don't really want to switch insurance plans now, which we'd need to do if I stopped working part time. We could do COBRA but that's super expensive so not really a good option. Hopefully, things will turn around over the next few months and she'll be better so switching coverage won't be a big concern anymore.

I've been much more active on ebay, which was my intent when I started working less. I currently have 72 items listed (plus 10-20 on Marketplace). Just this morning, for the first time in a long time, I bought some stuff to resell from an estate sale. While we still have plenty of stuff in the house for me to sell, I also know that if I want ebay to become a meaningful source of retirement income, I'm going to need to buy stock. I spent $14 today on 6 items that should bring in $100 or more. We shall see.

We have a cruise booked for August so we're hoping both that COVID is under control and that DW is physically able to do it.

I'm taking our tax stuff to the CPA on Tuesday. This year is complicated as it's our normal personal return, a final return for my cousin, and an estate return. I have no idea what that will all look like, if we'll owe, if we'll get money back, or what. So I kind of feel like I'm in limbo at the moment as far as making any big financial decisions until that's all done and I know where we stand.

Plenty of other things happening, but that's enough for now.

I haven't crunched the numbers in detail but big picture, here's how our spending stacked up for the past 3 years.

2019: $81,200

2020: $70,600

2021: $88,400

There was also a large one-time expense in 2021 not included there. We paid the lawyer handling my late cousin's estate $14,500. Technically that was paid from the estate (even though I was the sole beneficiary of the estate so ultimately it was my money either way) but I certainly don't need to count that when doing future spending projections.

We had one other large expense this year spending $10,200 for a home repair. If not for that, our 2021 spending would have come in a few thousand under 2019. We're not quite back to pre-pandemic spending yet.

We have trimmed a couple of costs over the past year or so. We cut cable in November 2020. Just this past month, I dropped DW's life insurance and one of my disability insurance policies. Our daughter aged off our health insurance in October but we're now paying out of pocket for her therapy as her new plan doesn't cover it.

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with where our numbers are at this point. I dropped to part time at the end of November so my income dropped by 1/3. That should still have me earning more than we're spending with a little to spare. That was pretty much my goal - earn enough to pay the bills and still save a bit and not have to touch the nest egg yet.

We had a meeting yesterday with a CFP. He happens to be my wife's cousin and is someone we know and trust. He's the farthest thing from a sleazy salesperson type as you can get. Very upfront and honest about everything. We told him before we scheduled the meeting that we were not interested in money management services and did not want to be sold anything. We were strictly looking for planning services.

Prior to the meeting, he sent a list of information he wanted us to bring: income statement, SS statements, tax returns, spending log, and portfolio review. All easy enough for me to put together.

We started by talking about our situation and goals and what we'd like retirement to look like. He asked if we had any specific questions or concerns we wanted him to address. I then walked him through our portfolio spreadsheet because it's not really designed for a stranger to necessarily read and clearly understand so I wanted to make sure he knew what everything was and how to follow it. We talked a fair amount about our spending and how we envision that changing (or not) in retirement.

He explained the review he will do and what the results will look like, what sorts of things he models in, etc. We scheduled a follow up visit for 11/19 to go over what he comes up with.

Without giving us any specific answers, which he can't do just off the top of his head understandably, he was impressed with our situation, portfolio, knowledge, and mindset. Just based on the initial review, he thought we were in good shape overall to retire in the near future but will go into far more detail once he runs all the numbers, analyzes our portfolio, etc.

One thing he particularly liked was how we have good diversity of account types. Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, 401k, taxable accounts, etc. He said it's always challenging when someone comes to him who has a lot of money but it's all in one place, like their 401k. The diversity creates much more flexibility when it comes to withdrawal planning and managing tax efficiency.

So overall he thinks we're on the right track and have managed things well. I'll post again after we have the follow up in a few weeks.

The probate period for my cousin's estate ended yesterday. The lawyer emailed me all of the forms needed to officially petition the court to close the estate and release the funds to me. There was one form I had to get notarized which I did earlier today. I just scanned and emailed everything back to him and will put the originals in the mail tomorrow. I'm not sure how long it takes for everything to process but that should be the last step.

Sometime soon the estate account should be paid out to me. It currently holds just over 547K. Then the task will be to invest that money. I'm not planning to do anything crazy with it. It will pretty much be added to our existing investments. Even at a modest return, though, that money will generate a nice chunk of our retirement income in the near future.

I was just reading another blog post about homes being money pits. I completely agree.

On Saturday, I was cleaning the drain in our bathroom sink, something I've done dozens of times. This time, when I was done and stepped away, I saw a stream of water coming from the drain pipe. A closer look revealed a small hole in the pipe. I grabbed a bucket and sopped up the water with a towel and put a call into our handyman. He said he could come on Monday.

He did come and fixed it, but his fix is less than perfect. There is now a very tiny bit of water leaking at the end of the pipe that he installed. There also seems to be a tiny bit coming from the cold water shutoff valve. The pipes are all quite old so I'm not surprised.

Bottom line is we're really going to need to have a plumber come out and replace everything going to and from that sink. Of course, when they built houses years ago they often didn't install shutoff valves or even access panels. Replacing the plumbing will mean cutting through the closet wall to access the pipes leading to the bathroom, turning off the water to the whole house, installing shutoff valves, then doing the actual plumbing work in the bathroom. I have no idea what that will all cost but I'm sure it won't be cheap. Yay.

In recent months, I've been doing a lot, and I do mean A LOT, of retirement planning. I've been reading and studying and educating myself on every aspect of retirement I can think of including withdrawal rates, taxes, Social Security, ACA coverage, Medicare (well not so much on that yet actually), and more. I've asked a bunch of questions on the SA forums. I joined and became quite active at Early-Retirement.org and have learned a ton of useful information there. I highly recommend the site if you are in the same boat as me.

I've made all kinds of charts and run through countless calculations and projections, played with FireCalc a bunch, and posted a "Can I Retire?" thread at ER with all of our details and I got a bunch of helpful responses.

Based on a number of things I've learned, I've made numerous changes to our portfolio to better position our holdings (more stocks in Roths, more bonds in taxable accounts, for example). I've done a number of things to consolidate our holdings and try to simplify some stuff (rolled over DW's old 401k and 403b, moved an outside MF into our Vanguard account, donated some appreciated stock to our synagogue, eliminated some duplication in our portfolio and got the total number of funds we own down from 16 or more to 11, which is still a lot but it's much better.

Anyway, the bottom line and the point of the title of this post is that no matter how I work the numbers and do the projections, I keep arriving at the same result: the amount we need to have saved for me to retire keeps coming out to be right around $2,500,000. I've become more and more confident in that number.

So what does that mean? Right now, today, we are a bit over $1,700,000. However, I will unfortunately be receiving an inheritance most likely within a year. The estate is currently valued right around $1,200,000 with minimal debt (less than 50K). There will be some expenses involved in settling everything, funeral costs, selling the house, travel, taking a leave from work, etc. I'm guessing that 200K should cover all of that which should leave me with roughly $900,000 as my inheritance. That would put us at $2,600,000 based on our current portfolio. If the market remains at least reasonably stable, even if it doesn't keep climbing like it's been doing, we'd likely have another 100-200K over the next year anyway and be at $1.9 million before the inheritance meaning we could potentially be at $2.8 million or even more when everything is done.

Assuming nothing crops up to make me question the $2.5 million figure, I should be at the point where retirement will work, even if the inheritance turns out to be 100K or so less than estimated.

That's both exciting and scary to be honest.

My plan right now is to beef up our cash holdings to create a nice big cushion to have in place when I do retire. My expense projection has us paying full price for ACA coverage but there's a reasonably good chance we can manage our taxable income to qualify for the subsidy which would make our numbers even better. I'm planning to meet with our CPA after tax season to really drill into a bunch of retirement tax issues including that one.

So yeah, that's how I've been spending way too much of my free time.

2020 was another fantastic year financially speaking.

Portfolio Value

12/31/19: $1,329,432.03

12/31/20: $1,624,972.12

Increase of $295,540.09 or 22.23%

Spending

This doesn't capture everything as it doesn't include things paid by cash and check, but it's an accurate comparison of identical spending year to year.

2019: $6,657/month

2020: $5,966/month

Clearly, the pandemic saved us a considerable amount of money, primarily from lack of travel and dining out.

If I subtract out spending for which we got reimbursed, the actual number drops to $5,325/month. I don't have the corresponding figure for 2019 so I can't compare that. However, just playing with that number - $5,325/month - and using the rule of thumb that you need 25 times annual expenses to retire, that would work out to $1,597,500. We're a bit over that so that's exciting. I realize our spending will creep back up once the pandemic ends, whenever that is, but theoretically if we could maintain the lifestyle we've had in 2020, we are right around where we would need to be to retire. Our actual target is more like $2.2 million but that's not so far off realistically.

Happy New Year to all. Have a great 2021.