These past few weeks have been crazy. Between conferences and mid-terms, my life has been disrupted. I have been trying to keep up to date with the blog but it has been a bit difficult.

Also, there has not been much change on the financial front since I had to wait to pay off more in my debt. I did make some progress on my car loan and added some additional money to my retirement but otherwise, my debt has remained the same.

My net worth did increase slightly and with payday this Friday I should have a better chance to pay down more debt. Progress is slow when you want to grow wealth but as long as you don’t waiver from the plan it will continue.

Larger Payment on Debt

This past week I was able to make a bigger payment to my debt since I had stalled a bit. There were a few medical bills that crept up and once I cleared those I was able to add $1200 to my credit card payment. My debt is now:

Credit Card 1: $6739.38
Automobile: $22,360

My net worth has increased to $60,160.52,

although this number has fluctuated with the market volatility. I do get paid tomorrow and will be adding another $1000 to my debt while also contributing more towards my 401k. This will offset any of the volatility.

Seeing this number increase keeps me grounded. I also met with my retirement advisor and had a great conversation. He indicated that I am on track to retain quite a bit of my salary when I do end up retiring. We also talked about a good age.

My Plan for Retirement

If I retire at 62, between pensions and retirement accounts I should be able to have about $75k a year in income. That is if I do not make any changes to my contributions and continuing working in my current career.

I enjoy my career. The work that I do is inspiring and allows me the flexibility to keep pursuing my interests and volunteer efforts. It also pays a pretty good salary.

I also plan on increasing contributions in the next month. Currently, I contribute seven percent and get a three percent match. I also add about $400 a month to savings. So total contributions to savings, investments, and retirement equal about 11 percent of my salary.

In the next month, I plan to up that by another percent and will continue to up it each month as my debt gets paid down. I have both a 457 and a 401k so ultimately I can contribute double the amount normally.

FI/RE

I may not be able to retire early, the RE in FIRE, but I will achieve Financial Independence. If I keep the path that I am on, I may even be able to retire a few years earlier than I planned.

At least I will not be those American’s that retire on less than $20k a year, according to some recent articles that I have been reading. Imagine having to try to live off of $20k a year. Even if your house is paid off you would still have utilities, groceries, gas, medical expenses, etc.

Even if you had social security payments, you may only have about $3000 per month to actually retire on. It is possible but not very easy.

Starting Over

Starting over at 45 was one of the major problems that I faced. Being bankrupt and with a fairly low salary, I was not contributing much to my retirement.

Seeing my net worth where it now makes me feel much better about my future. My net worth has grown from negative a few years ago to over $60k today.

As I may have mentioned I did manage to talk to my retirement planner and he estimated that since I have a pension from two other jobs and social security my current rate will give me a fairly good retirement, especially if I wait until 67.

I plan to have all my commercial debts paid off by next year. Well aside from my car payment, but that will be attacked as well. This will hopefully allow me more flexibility in the future to save for retirement and travel. That is of course when things get back to normal.