alt Hacker NewsIt’s almost impossible for an upper middle class couple to retire in the US before their 65 unless they have some type of government provided or private company provided health insurance like teachers, police officers, military etc.
It’s about $25K a year for a decent plan which is doable. But you have to hope that Republicans - and yes this is a political issue - don’t successfully kill the ACA and make it impossible to get insurance at any cost if you have a pre-existing condition. If you are old - you will develop a pre-existing condition.
My parents are 83 and 81 and retired at 57/55. But my mom was a teacher who still gets benefits through the government and my dad gets benefits from the one factory that didn’t shut down in our hometown.
I’m 51 and even if I could retire early financially, I wouldn’t do it and stay in the US. Play the smallest fiddle for us. I “retired my wife” at 44 in 2020 8 years into our marriage when I did a slight transition to an industry where remote work with travel is the norm (cloud consulting + app dev) and we have traveled a lot including doing stints as “digital nomads”.
We are staying in one of the countries that we might retire to as a Plan B for six weeks starting next week.
Even now that we moved to state tax free Florida and my wife hasn’t had to work in six years, she keeps a current CDL because she can get a job as a school bus driver easily for the benefits and someone will pay me for independent consulting if I lose my job.
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Without digging into this too far, I do think it’s possible but it does require starting early and sticking to the plan. I’m not one of those people, but I know people who are.
The mean household income for the 4th quintile is 115k a year. The mean of the middle quintile is 70k. There’s a theoretical 45k a year spread if you earn like the 4th quintile and spend like the 3rd (evidently possible since a lot of people live in the 3rd quintile).
Even ignoring compound interest, if you can hit that 4th quintile at 30 and you lose half the spread to taxes, by 55 you have 25 years of saving 22.5k/year for 562.5k in savings.
It’s probably not the most fun thing, but I do think it’s doable.
For curiosity's sake, what exactly do you think Republicans will do to "kill the ACA"? I doubt they're going to introduce a bill that revokes the ACA in its entirety. They killed the mandate almost a decade ago and the marketplace healthcare plans have continued to limp along, depending on the state. What's next?
https://mrmoneymustache.com/blog/ Read this story and more in the fire community, it's not impossible
With health marketplace you can get insurance, or you can get a PPA service, or save money into a HSA, like there is multiple ways to do it.
So Texas also doesn’t have income tax but my siblings house (assessed at a lower value than mine) is assessed property tax almost triple wha mine is, dwarfing my state income tax plus property tax. Not sure about Florida - YMMV.
The ACA is so terrible that an assassin just murdered an insurance company exec and the party that passed the ACA cheered for that.
The other way to avoid a pre-existing condition is to just avoid medical care entirely.
The FIRE community and my own personal situation prove you very, very wrong. It's absolutely possible for a upper middle class family to retire in their 50s, even in their 40s, if they live frugally.