Money Monday- Crunching the Numbers

      

     While not a great spring weekend weather wise, it was enough to get me outside longer, inviting fresh air and I do feel mentally better. Thanks for the comments on Saturdays blog about continuing to document springs arrival. I think it will be a fun little project to see the lilacs slowly emerge and the green growth to envelop the pond once again. It's now my countdown, 69 months to retirement, but could be as few as 17 for DH if we look at our math again. Warning for folks outside of the US, this is anther boring numbers post that will likely leave your head spinning from the overly ridiculous American money system.

     DH has had a challenging work experience for months, with nothing he can do about it. It's hard being in the car business when there's barely any product. He works longer hours juggling what there is in business, dealing with angry people, and incompetent and unscrupulous colleagues that show up when they feel like it, but then think they can pick up the store traffic when they actually bother to show up, ahead of DH. This along with the physical toll of being on his feet all day, and in and out on cold days and the hot days to come, is more wearing than one might think. Anyone in retail can probably attest to this. Long way of saying, we're crunching numbers again to see if we can knock four or more months off of his retirement date. He's adamant that he won't retire prior to our college kids graduation. That's 13 months from now. He'll turn 62 later that summer. That's now the new target, rather than holding off until the first of the year, and least my new target to figure out. . 

     There's wins and losses to slicing four months of employment off DH's schedule. On the positive side, we'd move in a slightly lower federal tax bracket by (based on historical earnings) 2% and state by 1.05%, even if DH decided to take early SSI withdrawal. That's more take home in my paycheck in 2024, but likely for 2023 as well if he stops earning four months earlier as we are on the cusp between two brackets. The stopping of DH's earning isn't as great an impact through that tax lens. 30% of his earnings minimally go in taxes, and an additional 6.2% in SSI. I'm not saying a statement about taxes being bad or good. It's just fact that his take home is significantly less than his salary. Of course the obvious is he would no longer be putting into his 401 K and his lifetime earnings for SSI will stop, reducing both of those amounts, but hey, at some point they'd stop anyway. Bottom line calculations lead me to think that if we can comfortably live just on my income this year, knowing the financial loss isn't 100% of his income, we can make this work four months earlier. He's not happy with where our cash savings would be at that point and feels the four final months would make a comfortable difference in his peace of mind, and still have him roughly done before hard winter sets in January, plus could get his three weeks of vacation paid out for 2024. That is all true as well and he hates the idea of losing vacation accrual pay out. 

     We know our quality of life will increase dramatically once he no longer works that job with those hours and schedule. We'd have Saturdays together to work on projects, play with pup, see friends and family. He can take care of pesky life admin things any time during the week that he now crams into his Thursday day off.  He can resume many of his hobbies and spend more time at the lake and with his mom while she's healthy like he probably wished he could have done with his dad. I've never heard someone say they wish they had less time with their parents before they passed away. I treasure that I spent pretty much every Friday or Saturday with mine before they died and were of sound mind. Who knows what time any of us have and if we can add one more late summer and fall to his free schedule, why push to work longer?

     We're still about $1,000 behind living off just my income for the year. Point to remember,  we cash flowed our DC trip, and had we not done that, we'd be ahead. That' was a good test to see if not only can we live on just my income, can we do a small bit of travelling too. I'm cutting corners where I can without cutting quality of life to make up what we haven't yet saved this year. I'm almost making a game of it, part of a personal challenge to cut waste, while increasing joy.  Other than Monday and Thursdays, I don't even want money or thrift to come up on my blog. That's where we are. We haven't made the numbers work how DH wants yet, but it's a start.