Uncategorized – 6 Years to Retire

6 years to retire – really?

I started this blog almost two years ago thinking that 60 was a good age to retire at, no real reason but mainly because that was when my parents retired. I had read all Mr Money Mustashe and because I hadn’t formally started on this FIRE journey in my thirties believed that there was no other option than the 60 retirement target.

Since then have done a lot more reading and watched numerous podcasts and then recalculated the potential pathways we could take. Numerous lightbulb moments and also taking into account things that have and are happening globally; ongoing pandemic, recent share market significant drop and the great resignation.

Into this mix, is my own role as a health manager and over the last two years working at the pointy end of the pandemic response. And like many other folks questioning whether working the 8 to 5+ “is all there is” to get us to this retirement dream?

So where are we now?

With my calculations and numerous spreadsheets (you know I mean numerous), we have enough savings, coupled with NZ Govt Super and my NZDF super confirmed that we can cease full-time employment in December 2023.

But as I said reading and watching blogs/podcasts we are not sure about suddenly ending full-time employment straight away. So done some recalculations and if we wanted to and coupled with the “I have had enough” feelings about work, am looking at both of us going down to 3 days per week starting next year. Haven’t discussed this with work at this stage to see if it is indeed doable. With Ms S she isn’t sure either. If we can do this, we are looking at this approach for 2023 and then either cutting down to 2 days per week for a further year or two.

Two of the key factors are maintaining a connection with the “outside” world and easing ourselves into our new way of living. My brother-in-law spoke to me about this years ago and I had actually forgotten about this, with my key driver was just about stopping work.

But on the other side, there are other factors to consider. My colleague was speaking just last week about a number of her friends that had stopped work at the same time as their other halves and almost had to go through the whole Bruce Tuckman approach, you know the one; forming storming, norming and performing approach just to be able to live full time together in their retirement 🤣🤣. Jeepers I hope that isn’t us…..

So this year will give us the time to fully plan and practice living on the annual spend that I have based my calculations on, continue to invest, focus on health and think about what we will be actually doing over the next 1-2, 3-5, 5-10 and so on.

So we just need to implement the plan, you think it would be easy!!!! However I feel it’s slowly all starting to come together.

Very happy days

Where did 2021 go?

It has been well over a year since I wrote anything on my blog, and boy you do wonder where all the time/days/months have gone. I wrote this in December 2021 and only now got around to posting it.

So a bit of a recap. You may recall in 2020 that we had to say farewell to our two beloved pets, Merkin and Charlie. Our remaining dog Benedict wasn’t himself and me as the dog whisper thought he was quite lonely, so thought we would get another retriever. That is easier said than done. Firstly not the right time of the year, hadn’t really thought about that and secondly trying to get one from around the country seemed like a bit of a challenge. Luckily we found a local breeder who agreed for us to purchase one of her dogs.

We wanted another female and there were two to pick from so we choose one. As we were doing a visit and holding the one we had chosen, we noticed that one of the other pubs had curled up on Ms S’s leg and fallen asleep. At the time we didn’t think much of it but at the second visit to see the pup, this other one came up and was first to greet us and again curled up around us. We went home and Ms S and I rang the breeder to change our minds to pick the other one. We did recall from somewhere that your pets choose you, and this little one did.

Covid-19 still continues to be a challenge with little outbreaks and surges still occurring but we were learning to live with that. Things were getting back to pretty much normal with plantings, work and connecting with family and friends

In November 2020 our new pup Lottie arrived and puppies are so cute. It was actually a bit emotional to have her brought home. Didn’t think it would be but was a bit like filling the void that Charlie’s passing had created.

Ok, that was the easy part the next was how on earth do we doggie proof our section when over the back of the property doesn’t have a back fence. Luckily for us, we still have all the hot wire fencing and posts from our previous property that we used with the sheep. Unfortunately, the portable battery pack had given up the ghost and needed replacing. Then over the course of a few months installed rolls of chicken wire (I mean rolls of chicken wire!!), tacked onto the post and rail fences. Bit of a mission as some of our shrubs and trees are now pretty established.

So a year on and there have been a few challenges with carpet pee, training, shoe chewing, vomiting, and early morning wake up calls. But it has all been worth it as she is a great companion along with Ben who follows us around the property or just “hangs”.

Christmas is always a fabulous time to connect with family and friends and seeing our little nephews open their pressies is always joyful with the looks on their faces. Then a bit of a relax with some games, good books and a few beverages.

Over the year I have done a lot of thinking about retirement, investing, minimalism, eco-footprint and many many other aspects. As you know I have always been a fan of spreadsheets as many of the retirement calculators are too “one size fits all”.

With our savings and projected spending that we will do in retirement, I believe that we can finish full-time employment by December 2023. A full three years earlier than originally planned. Ms S isn’t too convinced we can do this, but going by the numbers over the last 5 years I believe we can.

There are a few steps first. The biggest spend and one that we have completed is to fully pay off the house. The last payment we made early December and boy what a good feeling that is. The next step is to allocate for 2022 the amount that we will have to live on when we do finish working. So for 2022 we will have $65,000. This covers all of our outgoings and does include a few drinks at our local, some dinners, movie nights and a NZ holiday. Another big step is to fully save and invest the difference. A big question is where to invest this?

Mary Holm’s new book “A Richer You” talks about the 3 step approach; cash, bonds and shares, with the movement of funds from and to each area and the time span for these. A really good read.

Also joined a paid weekly live webinar Against All Odds (AAO) which is hosted by the team at Prosperity Of Life (which I have bought a business opportunity with, not realised yet but that is another blog episode) which gives their views on certain investment opportunities. Not advice but just what they are doing. From this I have bought some shares in areas I hadn’t thought of before, mainly around technology and emerging services following from this; SaaS, TaaS, 5g and a number of other areas. Also have bought a few cryptocurrencies as the number available will slowly be reducing over the next ten years and the value should increase.

Some other areas are with InvestNow, Hatch, Sharesies, and more funds to our KiwiSaver accounts. Noting that we will be a youthful 57 when we cease our salaried employment roles and need to keep our KiwiSavers ticking over to get the yearly Government minimum contribution. With InvestNow, will be one to two large PIE investments, Hatch most likely index funds like VTI or VOO. Sharesies is where most of the more risky stuff is from the AAO webinar, along with some in Tradestation. Will look at moving these shares to Hatch as they are a NZ based company and seem to have it sorted for tax.

Cryptocurrencies are interesting, took me a while to sort how this all works with purchases and then moving the coins of the platform to one or two wallets. Will so how this all goes.

So for us a big year ahead, mainly to see if all our plans actually do pan out. The big question is “can we actually live on $65,000”? As you can imagine I have a spreadsheet to track this🤣🤣🤣.

I would have to say – totally yes. Other people do and with kids.

Happy Days

Spring

I haven’t posted anything for a while and we are now well and truly into spring, which typically means unsettled weather with lots of growth. It does mean rain for Palmerston North, but hey – you live where you live and you just work with your environment. We do have an abundance of warm and wet weather clothing and the dog has a fluffy coat so no excuses not to get out in it.

Early morning walk along the Bridle Path

So what have we been up to? In August some of the many seeds I bought went into trays and went really well. Some however were an epic fail, I would like to blame it on the weather but they were in the den, in a great spot that we used last year, so all the blame does fall to me for an abundance of neglect.

I do have this knack for going out all guns blazing then it peters off when I get a bit bored. I just have to do a weekly and monthly plan and then just do what’s on the plan. You would think that would be pretty easy right – clearly not!!!

We both had a couple of weeks off mid-September and had booked to go to Rarotonga but with COVID-19 we didn’t go there so booked an Airbnb in Raumati with a planned trip to Kapiti island which we have never been to. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go to the island as a rather large storm came through and dashed our plans. Oh well, is only an hour or so down the road from us, and can rebook. We did do quite a few walks and had some lovely lunches as well as reading and relaxing, which we both needed. We were there for five days and then had the rest of the time at home getting stuck into the garden, clearing out rooms of the stuff we have accumulated over the years that we thought we would “need” when we moved from our last house four years ago, and also did a bit more reading.

For Ms S spring means bees; building new hives, checking the queens, the general health of the caste and then a big clean to be ready for summer. She also gave the new boxes a bit of an upmarket look with a trendy new paint job that look really fabulous.

The spring growth is happening so fast that the grass around our plantings is really taking off, so trying to keep on top of that is key so our time and the dollars on the plants haven’t been wasted. Plus there is the small lawn area and the usual weed eating. We are keen to section off some areas up the hill for some olives and over in our little valley for some fruit trees. Not sure about the area on top of the hill where I eventually want to put a sleepout come general potting shed. I know I do have to get the chainsaw out at the poplar tree we had cut down and left, is now sprouting.

Improving our health is still a journey and as is typical of me have been doing a bit of reading about IF and blue zones. IF is intermittent fasting and have been doing 16:8 albeit not too regularly and need to get more into a pattern. It actually was quite easy to do you just have to be focussed, know that the “hangriness” will go away, keep busy, and know that the benefits will follow. One or actually a few things for me are that I have to be organised, take a coffee cup with me, my lunch and the key is a water bottle (reusable of course). I did one 20 hour fast and must admit I was looking at the clock until 4pm but I did survive and didn’t fall over in a faint. My goal is to do most days 16:8 with some extended 20:4 thrown in to get some benefits of autophagy.

Blue zones are areas in the world where people live long and active lives. A guy called Dan Buettner has done quite a bit of research in this area. Really interesting as although these communities are spread around the world they have a number of aspects in common.

Firstly, people move naturally and frequently, their exercise is part of daily life, they are then they are able to regularly downshift or relax through their church, (for example), they know their life’s purpose – one was a fisherman and he was happy with that, they all mainly have a plant-based 80:20 diet and ate until they were 80% full (not sure how you do that 😉), they have a couple of alcoholic drinks per day (NB only a couple per day), they are all connected with their family in the first instance, they belong to a faith-based community and they were born or surround themselves with the right group of people i.e. thin, healthy, intelligent, fun, same ethics and values, etc.

So all in all, it is about connecting with family and close friends constantly, eat the right things at the right times, only two glasses of alcohol, having movement as a natural part of living, being able to relax through church, yoga or meditation. One of the key mantras is “Add more years to your Life and Life to your years” which I thought was fabulous.

Right back to this retirement business and a bit of an update on prepping and my numerous lists. Well, the trademe selling didn’t go so well and ended up taking a lot of the unused items to the Hospice shop, which isn’t a bad thing as hopefully they will get repurposed. Some items went into the neighbour’s wheelie bin for rubbish day. I will add “with their permission”, as wouldn’t like you to think I am one of those people that troll the neighbourhood looking for rubbish space – although not a bad idea (only kidding 😉).

Next time is a bit more of an update as to where we are at – planting, money and our plans to subdivide.

It never rains but it pours

So another digression from the planned post which was “more on the money stuff”. I wrote about pets in retirement, as we had found out that dear old Merkin had a fair whack of cancer in his wee body and wouldn’t be lasting very long. So today is the day that I have to take him for the blue injection. Blue you say, yes the fluid they give is a lovely blue colour. How do I know this, well this is the reason for the digression……..

So two or three weeks ago our retriever Charlie had started being a bit fussy with her food. At the time we put it down to her essentially staging a protest as we had put her back on her normal sensitive skin biscuits which I did have to admit looked quite bland. We had to change her biscuits over lockdown as the shop had run out of the bland but apparently good biscuits that we had been giving her over the years.

She still went for walks with us every second day but was still not eating her usual food, which for a retriever was very unusual. So off to the vet we went and did some bloods and an exam but couldn’t find out anything obvious. Next was an ultrasound scan and X-ray (we were well-rehearsed in this process as we had gone through this for Merkin a few weeks before). The bloods came back and showed issues with her gallbladder and liver, with the scan showing the same thing. So off to surgery we went, and she came out of it okay but unfortunately, two days later we got the dreaded early morning phone call to tell us that her vital signs were not good.

So we had to make the very very hard decision, the staff at Massey Vets were amazing. Charlie was in their animal ICU and they had music for her, sent us photos of her looking comfortable after her surgery, photos of her having cuddles with the staff as well as regular updates. They also gave you all potential outcomes (which for dear Charlie were all bad). We visited Charlie and she became quite agitated and it looked as if she was trying to get up to come home with us, it was heartbreaking.

So that’s how I know about the colour of the injection. We are okay with that. Our dear furry family members have been part of our lives for 11 and 14 years and we don’t want them suffering any more pain coupled with a quickly diminishing quality of life. We know that they have had good times and lives with us, so that does in some small part go towards easing the gaping hole that they do leave in our lives.

A few cool photos of Charlie and Merkin 😎

Next time……..

More on the money stuff and what have I actually completed from my checklist.

Pets in Retirement

I thought I would change tack slightly and talk about Pets in Retirement. You will understand why as you read on.

We have always had pets and currently we have two dogs; a retriever, and a rough collie and two cats Lily and Mr Merkin. All the pets as you can imagine have so enjoyed Ms S being home during lockdown especially the dogs and have now become “inside dogs”. The cats, well they just do what they want anyway as humans, as we know are just staff 😂.

As I write this Mr Merkin (or just Merkin) has just been diagnosed with cancer and has a very short lifespan left. We took him to the vet as he had lost weight and wasn’t eating. Is very sad as he has a fantastic personality, hangs out with us, follows us to the neighbours and around the property. Let me tell you a bit about him.

Merkin is a ginger ex-tom, and was around four years old when we got him from the SPCA cat. Silly me though that when you buy one it would be relatively cheap as you are essentially doing everyone a favour. Not on your nalley. $150 thank you very much. But when I roughly add it up there is the cost of neutering, chipping, worming, de-flea treatment and then staff and building costs. So all in all it is all worth it as you do get to re-home a pet.

You may be thinking Merkin is an interesting name for a cat. Well the story goes like this…….. When we got him in 2010 he was named Icon by the staff (really what sort of name is Icon). Anyway we were reading a newspaper back then and Lucy Lawless a NZ actor was starring in a TV production called Spartacus: Blood and Sand. She was commenting on the costumes they had to wear or actually lack thereof, as there was quite a bit of nudity. She discussed that she and her fellow female actors had to wear merkins. Now we had never heard of this we read on, and essentially they are fanny wigs or wigs to cover your shaven pubic area (Google this I dare you – but not on a work computer).

So we thought it would be a hoot to call our new cat Merkin. Was all fun until we were building our new house and we were living with friends at the time when Merkin went missing. Ms S pushed me out the door early in the morning to go call out for the cat. She gave me further instructions that in the event that I still couldn’t find him, I was to go house to house asking if they had seen my Merkin. You can imagine that when she was saying this, she was roaring with laughter just at the very thought of me doing this 😂. But luckily for me, oh and Merkin cat, he came back to the house in his own good time, he had just been out scoping out the new neighbourhood.

But thinking about retirement and pets, I suppose the question out of this post is; do you still have pets? Then if the answer is yes, at what point do you say no more? It may be when you can physically no longer care for them, or can’t afford to have them or you go into care. Perhaps all of the above. Something to ponder.

However unfortunately for dear old Merkin his ventures around the property with us will soon cease. We will find a nice place to bury him and plant a tree, perhaps an olive or plum tree to always have this reminder around the property where he used to walk and hang out with us.

Merkin enjoying the summer sun on the back deck (Dec 2019)

Next will be back on task with – what will retirement look like for us.

The Plan

Retirement for me (and therefore my other half as well) was always going to be at about 60 years old and I suppose that came from our parents who in their day did retire at 60 as this was the time when they were entitled to Government Super. So, the plan had always been around this age. We, like many others would love to retire earlier, but building our new house did mean we had to take on a mortgage again and does feel like a millstone as we hadn’t had one for a number of years.

Our financial position is good, I am fond of spreadsheets and done a number over the years to see how we are tracking for various projects. I suppose the key thing for retirement is how much will we spend and need to spend once we retire (versus want). The lockdown has really shown us that we don’t need to spend, actually use our preserves and food in the freezer in a thoughtful way, and rummage through the garage for scrap pieces of wood and the many nails that the builders left when they were building our house.

We also had the neighbours skip bin to rummage through as well. They are building a new house in front of us and before the lockdown their builders had completed the retaining wall, kitchen and some other house bits. As a consequence, they had binned numerous off cuts, retaining wall cloth, some broken down pipes, laminated kitchen wood and many other useful items that we gethered. We did our gathering in the early morning as dumpster diving isn’t really our thing, but the things you have to do when Bunnings isn’t open.

The other aspect is to actually finish projects that you start before taking on new ones. Coming out of lockdown we have now completed the new vegie garden and now has soil in it (apparently not a new concept) complete with vegie plants.

So back to the plan, you know the usual concept – earn more, spend less and save the difference. This will allow us to do the things that we have thought about doing once we finish full-time employment, more on that in the next installment. Back to money. I remember Brian Tracey talking about Parkinson’s law (I think it was called that) and more commonly if you earn more, your expenses rise in line with your salary increase. The key thing in his talk was don’t increase spending and save the difference. Seems pretty simple to me.

So currently our net worth is primarily made up of our house and rental property along with some shares, managed funds, KiwiSaver and a couple of retirement savings plans. Retiring at 60 we will have a super scheme from a previous role which isn’t a huge amount, but coupled with other savings we will have a good amount per year to live on. Have allowed for inflation (which I hope I have got right), with other aspects like holidays and renovations factored in on top of this figure.

I found a really good youtube tutorial about a concept called decumulation. I tried to find the link so I could credit the author, but unfortunately I can’t. If I do I will let you know. Have added the link below, start with either the 55 or 60 year tab, them start with the amount in the green cell. See what happens the graph and have a play. Lots of fun and perhaps a tab scarey 😉

Decumulation template Download

Well that is the plan, as rough as it is. We shall see how we go.

Next – what we want retirement to look like for us

Coming out of lockdown

30 May 2020

As I sit with my morning black coffee, New Zealand (NZ) is slowly working through what will be our new normal after being living with Level 4 and 3 restrictions. We have had two weekends of being allowed out into restaurants and catch-up with friends at the required social distancing space.

During the lockdown I continued to go to work at the DHB although was seconded to a different role. My other half worked from home zooming with her teams up and down the country. She initially found the lack of social interaction hard but now coming out on the other side is keen to continue working from home 2 days a week. Hopefully her boss will agree to this as many other people in her organisation work remotely.

We live in the Manawatu and six years ago bought a property in a new subdivision with a hectare of land covered in some native bush. We had previously lived in the Rangitikei for many years on a lifestyle block with sheep, chickens, dogs, cats, fruit trees and many vegie gardens. We did a lot of preserving, freezing, collected pine cones for the fire from the nearby forest, and foraged for berries, mushrooms and apples along the way. Life was good.

Then I had an idea, we both worked in Palmerston North and we were getting a bit older (47) that we should move into town so closer to doctors, hospital etc etc just in case we need health care as we age. As you can image, I got shot down and told that I was being chicken little and we will be fine.

However, the idea was set, built a new house and here we are in 2020 having lived in our new community for 3.5 years.

So, what is this blog. It is really for us, ok mainly me, to track how we are poddling along to retire at 60 which is 6 years away. When I mean retire I mean ceasing full time paid employment and doesn’t mean put your feet up and wallow away.

Next – The Plan